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Postpartum psychosis is a medical emergency. If you or someone you love is experiencing symptoms, Postpartum Support International's helpline is 1-800-944-4773 (call or text), and 988 is available 24/7.

If you're pregnant, postpartum, or love someone who is — send this to them.

Follow Ayana: @ayanagabriellelage | Missing Me → ayanalage.com/book

The Lindsay Clancy trial has put postpartum psychosis in front of a jury — and in front of everyone's FYP. Millions of people are hearing the words for the first time. We recorded this conversation more than a year before that trial began. While this is an encore episode, we feel like it's an important topic to talk about.

Ayana Lage is a freelance writer, content creator, and mom of two in Tampa. She's also the author of Missing Me: A Memoir of Postpartum Psychosis and the Long Road Back — and one of the one to two women in every thousand who give birth who experience postpartum psychosis. She did it after doing every single thing right. Antidepressant maintained through pregnancy. Therapist. Psychiatrist. Doula. A nurse for a sister. A loving husband. A family that never left. She knew the symptoms of postpartum depression cold. None of it stopped what happened ten days after her daughter was born.

She takes us through all of it: the strange euphoria in the first days, why not needing sleep is the warning sign almost everyone misses, the paranoia, the messages from God around day nine, the moment she told her family to get her to a hospital immediately — and the hallucinations that started the second she walked into the ER. She was inpatient for 17 days at the height of the pandemic with no visitors allowed. Her newborn was 27 days old when she got home. Doctors cycled through medications that didn't work and started discussing long-term residential care and electroconvulsive therapy before an old-school antipsychotic finally brought her back far enough to recognize that not everything she believed was real.

We also get into what came after: the guilt of missing her daughter's first month, taking a full year to feel like herself, and the four-year gap before she decided to do it again — this time with an overnight doula, formula from day one, and her husband on every night feed.

And Zara asks Ayana the question the Clancy case keeps circling and rarely lands on: whether a Black woman in psychosis would be given the same grace as a white nurse in a nice Massachusetts suburb. That answer, and everything around it, is the last ten minutes.

Ayana's memoir, Missing Me, is out now from Hachette. She built it from the notebooks she kept during her episode and from her own medical records — which means it contains the parts she couldn't access from memory alone. It's been praised by Publishers Weekly, Bustle, and the Tampa Bay Times, with blurbs from Kate Baer, Nora McInerny, and Jessica Zucker. If this episode hits you, the book is the long version. Order it here: ayanalage.com/book

This one covers postpartum psychosis, postpartum depression and anxiety, intrusive thoughts, postpartum OCD and rage, birth trauma and emergency C-sections, miscarriage and pregnancy loss, faith and mental illness, maternal mental health care in the US, and what it actually takes to survive the thing nobody warns you about.

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Website: https://www.doyouwantthetruthpod.com

Connect with Sam:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/samanthastrom

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@samanthastorms

Connect with Zara:

Zara Hanawalt https://www.linkedin.com/in/zara-hanawalt/

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Episode Summary
Sam, Zara, and guest Katie Beach (@katiebeach, content creator and co-host of Just Us Girls) go deep on the Summer House three-part reunion — and they are not letting anyone off easy. From the Amanda and West emotional affair and beta blocker gate, to Kyle's financial situation, Ciara’s dignity, and West's pattern of gaslighting women of color, this episode covers every layer. They also get into GLP-1 culture postpartum, raising sons in the age of the manosphere, and why Bravo is genuinely a sociological study in disguise.

Episode Description

Sam and Zara are joined by content creator and Just Us Girls podcast co-host Katie Beach for a full Summer House reunion autopsy — and honestly, we have so many questions that still aren't answered.

Do you believe nothing physical happened between Amanda and West? Because we don't. We're breaking down the beta blocker situation, Amanda's persistent victim complex, the way she said "you don't deserve a friend like me" to Ciara (girl — wrong direction), and why West Wilson may just be the most dangerous man in the room precisely because he performs feminism so loudly.

We also talk about: Kyle's DJ era hitting different now that we know about the $2.9M loan, the Raquel/Ariana parallel that is impossible to unsee, why the Plan Bree podcast about West's friend is sending us, and what it actually means that West gave Amanda everything he told Ciara he wasn't capable of giving — after two years.

Plus: raising sons after watching this reunion (terrifying), being postpartum in a GLP-1 world, why Bravo fans are actually the most intelligent women in any room, and our predictions for what happens next with Amanda and West. Spoiler: Sam thinks they're getting married. Katie thinks Kyle and Amanda are getting back together. We're all just waiting.

Support the show

Website: https://www.doyouwantthetruthpod.com

Connect with Sam:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/samanthastrom

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@samanthastorms

Connect with Zara:

Zara Hanawalt https://www.linkedin.com/in/zara-hanawalt/

TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@zarahanawalt

Instagram https://www.instagram.com/zarahanawalt/

Send us Fan Mail

This week, Sam and Zara are calling everyone out. Everlane built their whole brand on sustainability — then sold to Shein for $100M. Summer House editors have been leading us to believe that Kyle's the only problem for years. West and Amanda's "friendship" has been a lot more than that...obviously. And Hayden Panettiere's sponsors dropped her for talking about postpartum depression while protecting the very men who made her life a nightmare. This episode is about the brands, the people, and the relationships that have not been telling us the truth — and what happens when the truth finally comes out anyway.

Plus: the $2.9M Loverboy loan detail that reframes Kyle's entire season, Jesse crying at the reunion, Alex Cooper's very well-timed pregnancy news, and a genuinely honest conversation about fertility struggles and what to say to a friend going through it.

Recorded before the Summer House Finale aired

🎙 Jason Tartik's Podcast

💰 The Truth behind Everlane's Shein Acquisition

📋 The list of retailers to avoid - Shein does top the list after all!

Support the show

Website: https://www.doyouwantthetruthpod.com

Connect with Sam:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/samanthastrom

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@samanthastorms

Connect with Zara:

Zara Hanawalt https://www.linkedin.com/in/zara-hanawalt/

TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@zarahanawalt

Instagram https://www.instagram.com/zarahanawalt/