In this episode of The Soft Parts, Nik and Nhi explore the connections between parenting, emotional regulation, masculinity, and the growing normalization of violence in American society.

The conversation begins with a disturbing experience Nhi had at a pumpkin patch, where an older child threatened her six-year-old nephew while the adults responsible seemingly looked the other way. This encounter sparks a broader discussion about childhood behavior, accountability, and the importance of teaching empathy, boundaries, and healthy emotional expression.

Drawing from their personal experiences and professional backgrounds in healthcare and mental health, Nik and Nhi examine how children learn through observation, the influence of social media and gun culture, and the consequences of growing up without the tools to manage anger, rejection, or conflict.

The discussion takes a deeply personal turn when a recent shooting near Indiana University's Bloomington campus brings back memories of a terrifying Halloween night during their college years. As gunfire erupted at a crowded party, Nik and Nhi found themselves fleeing for safety; an experience that raises questions about trauma, survival, and the devastating consequences of unchecked anger.

Ultimately, this episode challenges listeners to consider the role of parents, communities, and society in shaping future generations. If we want children to grow into emotionally responsible adults, what behaviors do we need to stop normalizing, and what patterns do we need to unlearn ourselves?

Join Nik and Nhi for a candid, thought-provoking conversation about parenting, accountability, generational patterns, and the responsibility we all share in creating a less violent society.

Content advisory: This episode discusses bullying, threats toward children, gun violence, death, and traumatic experiences. Listener discretion is advised.

For The Soft Parts’ first guest episode, Nik & Nhi are joined by Faith, a therapist, social worker, colleague, friend, and certified baddie.

What starts with stories from Faith’s work inside a women’s prison quickly turns into a very real conversation about what it means to take care of other people for a living while still trying to take care of yourself.

Faith, Nik & Nhi get into workplace safety, inappropriate patients, emotional exhaustion, the things nobody warns you about before entering a helping profession, and what happens to all the shit you absorb when the workday ends. Faith talks about why this therapist has a therapist of her own, while Nik & Nhi share how crisis mental health and urgent care have shaped the way they manage stress, boundaries, safety, and their own mental health.

They also talk about why; despite the chaos, the burnout, the bodily fluids, the wild stories, and the occasional desire to clock out immediately, they would still choose the work again. And somewhere along the way, the interview turns into three friends laughing, calling each other out, talking about friendship and future dreams, and reminding each other that nobody has to have everything figured out.

At the center of it all is one simple reminder: the people caring for everyone else are human too.

Be kind. You never really know what someone is carrying.

**If you live in AZ and wish to connect with Faith, you can do so here:

• Faith's PsychologyToday

RESOURCES:

• 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline : Call or text 988 for free, confidential crisis support in the United States.

• Crisis Text Line: Text HOME to 741741 for free, confidential crisis support.

This week, Nik and Nhi talk about the exhaustion of being a woman in a world that constantly asks women to anticipate their own harm.

Using the recent allegations involving a former Cornell student and members of the Chi Phi fraternity as a starting point, Nik and Nhi unpack consent, intoxication, victim shaming and blaming, the pressure to be the “perfect victim,” and what happens when institutions and bystanders fail the people they’re supposed to protect.

But the conversation quickly becomes bigger than one case.

They talk about the constant risk assessments women make without even realizing it; where they park, who they’re alone with, who made their drink, whether they should walk down that hallway, whether their clothes will somehow become evidence against them, whether saying no will actually be respected, and whether anyone will believe them if something does happen.

Nik and Nhi also ask what responsibility men have when the danger isn’t coming from them personally, but from another man they know. Is simply saying “I would never do that” enough? What happens when misogyny, objectification, harassment, or violence is happening right in front of someone and they choose not to intervene?

And if something different is going to exist for the next generation, the conversation has to start much earlier than sex. Consent is also about teaching children to respect “no,” recognize another person’s boundaries, keep their hands to themselves, and understand that nobody else’s body, space, or autonomy belongs to them.

This episode is angry. It’s sad. It’s personal. And mostly, Nik and Nhi are tired.

At some point, the question becomes: How much smaller do women have to make themselves before the responsibility finally stops being theirs?

CONTENT NOTE:
This episode includes discussion of sexual assault, rape, drug-facilitated assault, victim blaming, violence, and capital punishment.

EDITOR’S NOTE:
During the episode, Nik and Nhi referenced early reporting that Larry Nassar had recently been removed from Michigan’s sex offender registry. Subsequent clarification from Michigan State Police established that Nassar was never listed on Michigan’s registry and therefore was not among those removed. More than 20,000 other people were removed from the public registry following a Michigan Supreme Court ruling concerning retroactive application of the state’s registration requirements. This note is included to correct that information.

RESOURCES:

• National Sexual Assault Hotline (RAINN)
  Free, confidential, 24/7 support for survivors of sexual violence.
  Call: 800-656-HOPE (4673)
  Text: HOPE to 64673
  Chat: RAINN.org/hotline

• 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline
  Free, confidential crisis support.
  Call or text: 988
  Chat: 988lifeline.org

• National Domestic Violence Hotline
  Support, safety planning, information, and resources for people affected by relationship abuse.
  Call: 800-799-SAFE (7233)
  Text: START to 88788
  Chat: TheHotline.org

We love traveling. The actual process of getting somewhere? That’s a different story.

This week on The Soft Parts, Nik and Nhi are talking about the highs, lows, and deeply personal attacks that come with travel. From delayed flights, lost luggage, airport sleepovers, motion sickness, long TSA lines, and strangers taking up entirely too much space on the plane, somehow getting to the destination is always half the battle.

They look back on some of their most memorable travel experiences, from family trips to Vietnam and childhood travel stories, to New Orleans, the Caribbean, London, Seattle, and everywhere in between, and talk about traveling alone versus with family, navigating airports as women of color, the particular chaos of traveling with people you love, and why food is absolutely a valid reason to plan an entire trip.

Plus: Why Nhi needs Global Entry immediately, why Nik apparently enjoys living dangerously with airport arrival times, their case for teleportation, and a rapid-fire breakdown of their very different travel personalities.

Travel may stress us out, inconvenience us, lose our bags, and occasionally leave us sleeping in an airport…but are we going to stop booking flights?

Absolutely not.

What happens when you start questioning the beliefs you've always hold?

This week, we’re talking about God, karma, religion, spirituality, reincarnation, and the messy process of figuring out what we actually believe.

Nik reflects on growing up deeply involved in the Catholic Church, from Catholic school to choir and church performance, and how college, history, and learning more about the relationship between religion, race, slavery, and power led her to questioning the faith she had always known. She shares what it has been like to move away from Christianity, identify more with spirituality, and even grieve the comfort that once came with believing there was someone or something unquestionably looking out for her.

Meanwhile, Nhi takes us inside her own Buddhist beliefs around karma, reincarnation, karmic debt, fate, and the possibility that the consequences of our actions may stretch far beyond one lifetime. Which naturally leads us to déjà vu, past lives, mysterious birthmarks, lottery karma, and whether Nhi was apparently stabbed in the back in another life.

Somewhere along the way, we also get into religion as a coping mechanism, science versus faith, why bad things happen to good people, bodily autonomy, people imposing their beliefs on others, and one question we keep circling back to:

Do we need proof for something to be meaningful, or is believing sometimes enough?

We definitely don't solve religion in one episode. But we do what we always do: question, laugh, disagree, get distracted, come back around, and try to understand each other a little better.

This conversation is the beginning of one we'll keep returning to. Our experiences and interpretations are personal and aren't intended to represent every person or tradition within Christianity, Catholicism, Buddhism, or any other belief system.

Content Note: This episode includes discussion of religion, religious trauma, abortion/reproductive autonomy, death/infant loss, mental health, and explicit language.

Want to explore further? Here are some resources that we hope may help.

Religious switching & leaving the religion you were raised in - Pew Research Center. Pew’s recent research looks at why people remain in or move away from their childhood religion, including changes in belief, spiritual needs, and gradual disaffiliation.

Buddha, karma & rebirth - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. A much deeper look at Buddhist philosophical teachings, including the relationship between karma, action, consequences, and rebirth.

Religion, spirituality & coping - American Psychological Association. APA discusses research showing that religion and spirituality can serve as powerful sources of support and meaning during hardship; spiritual struggles can also become sources of distress.

Religion and enslaved people in American history - National Park Service. This resource explores the role Christianity played within slavery, including efforts by enslavers to use religious instruction as a form of control and the ways enslaved people developed and practiced faith for themselves.

Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood health centers provide services beyond abortion, including birth control, STI testing and treatment, pregnancy testing, HIV services, preventive care, and other reproductive and sexual health services.

Sometimes you just need to unburden yourself… and apparently, this week, the burden is men.

In this episode of The Soft Parts, Nik and Nhi are letting it ALL out, from dating pet peeves and terrible hygiene to men who can’t make plans, don’t listen, offer unsolicited advice, lack emotional awareness, and somehow still expect women to do all the emotional heavy lifting.

What starts as a much-needed rant quickly turns into a bigger conversation about effort, consideration, accountability, entitlement, cheating, emotional intelligence, and why the current dating climate can feel so damn exhausting.

There are stories. Of course, there are strong opinions. There is a rogue toenail. And somewhere along the way, we have to ask: are women really asking for too much… or are we just tired of asking for the bare minimum?

Not all men, but, as we say in this episode, somehow it’s always a man.

Come laugh, vent, and unpack it with us.

Haiti has survived revolution, exploitation, foreign intervention, political instability, devastating natural disasters, and generations of being asked to rebuild again and again. But Haiti is more than what has happened to it.

In this episode, Nik and Nhi reflect on the recent gang attack in Kenscoff, the end of Temporary Protected Status for hundreds of thousands of Haitians in the U.S., and the complicated experience of watching your home country hurt from afar.

Nik also looks back at Haiti’s history, from the revolution that created the world’s first independent Black republic to the debt imposed by France, foreign occupation, the 2010 earthquake, and the crises that followed, and wrestles with what it means to continually describe Haitians as “resilient.” Because resilience can be a source of pride. But how many times should a people be expected to prove that they can survive?

This is a conversation about grief, diaspora, identity, compassion without pity, and refusing to let tragedy become the entirety of Haiti’s story.

To Haitians at home and across the diaspora: we see you.

What does it actually mean for a society to protect women, and why does that protection so often seem conditional?

Nik and Nhi begin with discussing a TikTok video of a woman documenting her pregnancy in South Korea, where expectant mothers can receive government-supported benefits and accommodations. That leads to a bigger question: if societies are willing to invest in women once they become pregnant, what are they doing to make women feel safe, supported, and autonomous before motherhood, or whether they become mothers at all?

Using South Korea’s 4B Movement as a starting point, the conversation expands across cultures and systems. Nik and Nhi discuss gender-based violence, cultural expectations around marriage and motherhood, sexual assault and the justice system, abortion and reproductive autonomy, and the ways women navigate safety in countries including South Korea, Vietnam, Haiti, and the United States.

They also explore anger, accountability, and what justice can mean when institutions fail, and turn toward healthcare to examine the responsibility providers carry when caring for people at their most vulnerable.

At the center of the conversation is one question: Do our systems actually value women, or only certain roles women are expected to fill?

Content note: This episode includes discussion of sexual assault, child sexual abuse, gender-based violence, abortion, reproductive rights, and mental-health crises.

Resources & References

Books

• Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire
• Reproductive Justice: An Introduction by Loretta Ross and Rickie Solinger.
• Hood Feminism by Mikki Kendall
• Entitled: How Male Privilege Hurts Women by Kate Manne
• Killing the Black Body by Dorothy Roberts

Podcasts/Further Listening

• The Briefing- The 4B Movement is going viral...What is it? episode.
• Throughline "After Roe: A New Battlefield" Episode.
• Looking Back, Moving Forward "Inside the Feminist Fight to Reclaim Our Reproductive Freedom" Episode.

Website Links

• UN Women — Global Database on Violence Against Women and Girls
• World Health Organization — Violence Against Women
• SisterSong — Reproductive Justice