Potatoes, cat tongues, and sandpaper skin—let’s talk food aversions, texture nightmares, and why maybe it’s totally fine to be a grown adult who can’t stand an apple.

This week on Different, not broken, I go fully public with a truth: I am not a picky eater. I am… let’s say, texture specific. I will sample almost anything—once. What happens afterward is between me, my gag reflex, and whatever unholy thing just brushed across my taste buds. Mashed potatoes? Yes. Potatoes in soup? Get them away from me. Tomato sauce? Great! Raw tomato? Why do you hate me? Apple slices? Hard pass. Apple juice? Sign me up. Oranges are a war zone, but orange juice is fine—just keep the strings (and the heartburn) far, far away.

Are these food preferences weird? Yes. Am I objectively a successful adult nonetheless? Also yes. Even if I can’t finish a plate of beans without gagging while my kids, in a spectacular twist of parental fate, will eat literally anything with stoic enthusiasm.

It’s not just about food, though. We blend the personal with the professional this episode. Our guest is the incomparable Speaker B, CEO of Luna Joy, mental health advocate, and my literal first phone call when I decided to build my practice. We tackle the idea of “competition” in women’s mental health spaces (spoiler: the real competition is the broken system, not each other) and how collaboration—not cutthroat tactics—moves everyone forward.

Thinking of launching your own thing but stuck on knowing whether venture capital and bootstrapping are just buzzwords for other people? We’ve lived both sides. Speaker B and I compare paths: raising millions in venture funding (which is about as glamorous as microwaving leftovers, more or less) versus scraping resources together and building from the ground up. Both are exhausting. Both are possible. Both come with landmines only those who have actually been in the room can describe.

Maybe you’ve never considered what it’s like to be the only woman—sometimes the only woman of color—pitching life-or-death solutions to a room full of people who need to check with their wives to know what postpartum depression is. Spoiler: you end up not only knowing you belong in those rooms, but also knowing you’ve got something the rest of the room literally cannot bring.

Still deciding if Different, not broken is your kind of podcast? If you’ve ever:

• Wondered why your sandwich can’t just be a sandwich—without some slimy tomato sabotaging it
• Needed to know how real women founders support each other through texts, resources, and mutual survival tactics instead of passive-aggressive LinkedIn shade
• Wanted to hear a vulnerable, unfiltered story about living through postpartum depression from someone who was clinically trained to help others (and still couldn’t get help herself)
• Needed a reason to feel absolutely valid in your own “weirdness,” whether that’s food, mood, or business battles
• Are looking for a show where softness is strength, and being different is a whole functional life, not a defect

Then hit play. If nothing else, you’ll leave feeling a little less alone in your quirks, and maybe with exactly the push you need to find your own sandbox—and fill it with the right people.

Plus, in Small Talk: a former Marine writes in about random, emotional tears in middle age. Why does softness sneak up on us, and what does it mean to finally drop the armor and just feel? Spoiler: it isn’t weakness.

Listen in. We save room for you—no tomatoes required.

Find out more about Sipra here: https://sipraladdhamd.com/

Being licked by a cat is an objectively weird experience, especially if

you're a dog person and you're used to, like, slobbery,

jovial faces, and instead you're getting, like

literal sandpaper being raked across your skin. Like, that's weird.

And I think the idea that we're competing against each other is

a very short sighted one. And I think the idea that we are competing against

a huge problem that has been perpetuated for a lot of reasons for

decades. That's really the competition. And we all kind of need to work together.

All right, here we go. I'm gonna pretend I'm pushing record because that feels right.

Okay, I'm pressing record. Boop. Hi,

everybody. I'm Lauren Howard. Welcome to Different

Not Broken, which is our podcast on exactly that.

That there are a lot of people in this world walking around feeling broken. And

the reality is you're just different. And that's fine.

I want to be clear about something. I'm not a picky eater. I will try

almost everything. I just probably hate most of

it. But I will try it. And it's very rarely

the taste, it is almost always the texture. And this means

that there are things that I will eat in certain incarnations that I will not

eat in other incarnations. It's like a whole thing.

Potatoes. Okay. I love french fries. I

love baked potatoes. I love mashed potatoes.

But I cannot. Please hear me when I say cannot eat

potatoes in soup. Or like whole potatoes

roasted, that you are just supposed to eat as a

potato. Can't. That's not.

Nope. Can't do it. But you give me a mashed potato. Great.

You give me a baked potato. Awesome. Caveat. Skins

do not belong in mashed potatoes. They don't. That's just

laziness. And I didn't ask you to make the mashed potatoes to begin with.

You didn't have to make them that way for me. So I'm just saying

skins don't belong. They're not better. The exception to that, however,

is that I will eat potato skins. But that is probably

because they are 94% cheese and bacon. And I can make

arrangements around the rest of it because of

the distribution of the cheese and bacon. I will eat the skin

for the cheese and bacon. I would much rather a

scooped out potato without the skin, but I will tolerate

the skin because of the cheese and bacon distribution.

Tomatoes. I cannot eat an uncooked tomato.

Nope. You want to put a tomato on my sandwich? I reject that. Don't

put tomatoes on my sandwich. You Want tomatoes in my salad? Nope. Hard.

Nope. They don't belong there. Tomato sauce is fine.

It's fine. It's not my favorite. Like, there are good tomato

sauces. And I also think I like tomato sauce a lot more than I realize.

I always think I don't like it, and then I eat it, and I'm like,

oh, this is kind of good. I'm not against it. You could be like, will

you eat this thing with red sauce? I'll be like, yeah, it's fine. Tomato sauce

is fine. Tomatoes? Nope. Apples.

And I don't know why. This is all, like, things that are supposed to be

healthy for you. That probably tells you what really is the problem. There's

nothing about an apple that should exist the way it exists. It just, like,

it's so hard. It's hard to bite into. The texture

is not okay. But I'll drink apple juice. I

like apple juice. Go with that. I also don't want apples in

anything. Like, I don't want apple pie. I don't

want apple on my sandwich. Who does that? Seriously? Apples don't

belong on sandwiches. But I'll drink apple juice. That's fine. I have no problem with

the juice. Same thing with oranges. I really don't like oranges. I don't like

watching people eat oranges. I'm just like. I just see all the strings, and I'm

like, there's so many strings in your mouth. It just. It's not right. It's not

right. My kids love oranges, and I give them their

oranges because they're good for them. But I don't mind orange juice. I'll drink orange

juice. I like the flavor, not the texture. Texture is the problem. Drink

all the orange juice in the world, except for the fact that I'm now old

and it gives me copious amounts of ingestion, and that is rude.

But, yeah, I can't do oranges. Beans. No. No beans

of any kind. Beans taste like a cat's tongue feels, and it

makes me gag. I actually really like the flavor of beans. Like the

taste, but the texture. No, no. If I wanted

to eat a cat, I'd eat a cat. And I don't want to eat a

cat. I don't want to be licked by a cat either. I don't like cats.

That's not true. I like other people's cats. I quite like other people's cats. If

you have a cat, I want to come over and hang out with your cat,

but I don't want a cat in My house. I have no problem with your

cat. Being licked by a cat is an objectively weird experience,

especially if you're a dog person and you're used to like

slobbery, jovial faces and instead

you're getting like literal sandpaper being raked across your skin. Like, that's weird.

And when you eat something and it has the same texture,

that's not okay. That's not okay. Make beans

less offensive. And I will eat them, but I can't. I just can't. I just

can't. I can't eat beans. I try. My mother in law makes stuff sometimes

and tries to hide the beans in like a puree. And like, good for her.

And by the way, she does not have to do those things for my children

at all. My children just eat the things they like. All the things.

That's like the ultimate in either ironic parenting or

like childhood rebellion. I don't know which one it is, but the fact that I

got the children who eat everything without

complaint, who, like my oldest, there's food she

doesn't even like and she'll just eat it. She's like, it's fine, I don't really

care. And I'm like, I have never once taken a bite of something

that I objectively dislike and been like, it's

fine, I'll finish it. No, that's not how my gag reflex

works. No, absolutely not.

Cannot possibly happen. And she's just like,

it's fine, I can handle it. She doesn't like blueberries, she eats

blueberries. She's like, I can tolerate them. I'm like,

I can tolerate nothing. Coke, freestyle machines. That's not a

texture thing. That's just an intestinal moral fortitude thing.

Like, how dare you? How dare you give me

my syrupy, sweet,

carcinogenic drink and mix it with other

people's syrupy, sweet, carcinogenic drinks. That is not

what comes out of that machine, is not a Coca Cola. It is some

modified version of Frankenstein soda that tastes

like sweet armpit. No. And we've

already talked about this before, but I can absolutely tell you

where a beverage is from based on the taste alone, without

looking at any other identifiers of it, because I have a

beautiful mind and it's only for soft drink locations.

I say all of this because I am without question

a successful and fully functioning adult who

pays my bills, who has sort of halfway raised

two hecking good kids, who runs businesses,

and who also might be bad at some of the, like, very

fundamental parts of life. It is what it is so

on that note, if anybody else has aversions that they want to share,

I love hearing about them. I probably share them. There's a lot of them that

people talk about that I'm like, oh yeah, no, I do that too. But also,

if you have a tongue that is just like generally averse to everything that is

not made for toddlers, I would like to hear from you because we do

exist and we are grown ups and we can do good things

in life while also being unable to

tolerate eggs. Not eggs. I'm fine with eggs.

Apples. Let's go with apples. That's also weird, right? I like all types of

eggs. All types of eggs. I have no aversions to any types of eggs. People

have very strong aversions to eggs. I will eat them in any form. But keep

your apples away from me. Those are not meant for human consumption. They're hard

and Sandy Bleh. Our guest

today is Sifulada and she's an incredibly

important person to me. A lot of people don't know this, but when we

decided to open up our practice,

Sipra was literally my first phone call. That's important. Aside from

the fact that she's just a good friend, it's important because

technically our companies are competitive. We're in the same space. I don't believe

in competition. We need more good people in our space, not less.

But when you find the right people who you can operate

in business around, your first phone call, when you decide to

do something in that business is going to be to somebody else who is literally

in your field, who's going to be a cheerleader for you even though

you're playing in the same sandbox and it makes the sandbox better. Super excited to

have Sipper here today. She is the CEO of Luna Joy, which is an incredible

mental health platform specifically focused on women of all ages. What

they have built there is spectacular. I'm so excited to talk to

her today about a number of things, some of which will be

business related and some of which will be just 2026 toxic hellscape

related. So Sipra, thank you so much for being here. I'm

a previous private practice owner, I've worked in the health system and

Most recently in 2022 was co founder of

Lunajoy Health where we were very focused on pregnancy and

postpartum related mental health is where we started and we really expanded

to women's mental health across the lifespan and this was

at a time where women's health was basically a category and what

we found there was what I knew all through my clinical practice that women need

specialized solutions and we can't give big box solutions to

everyone and expect for them to work. And so we have now expanded

or in many states, treating thousands and thousands of women a month.

And it's just been such a privilege and a joy and honor. And I want

to actually just jump off of something that you said about calling someone in your

sandbox first. I was very honored that I was the first person that you called

when you decided to take on that endeavor. And I really like that analogy. I

think that the women's health space, we all win through cooperation. And

really in the mental health space, we all win through cooperation. I am

friends with competitor CEOs. I've helped them actively, they've

helped me actively. And I like the analogy of the sandbox because I've never been

in a sandbox where I've seen the kids run out of sand. There's always

more than enough sand. And I think the idea that we're

competing against each other is a very short sighted one. I think the idea

that we are competing against a huge problem that has been perpetuated for a lot

of reasons for decades, that's really the competition. And we all

kind of need to work together a hundred percent. The number of times that I've

texted you and been like, hey, do you have a resource for? Or you've done

the same and said, hey, what do you use for this type of whatever? And

we just send it back and forth like, why would I keep something that could

help your patients? They're your patients. Like, why would I not share

that back with you? Why would I not help you make your programs better? I

don't think we would have gotten to where we got without people like you

and a handful of other people in this space. We just built together. We just

built alongside each other, a rising tide. But when things went well,

we shared the wealth. And when things were awful, we're texting back and forth

going, how did you get through this problem? That's the only way that you survive

in this landscape. And I think especially as women and as women who are

so much less likely to just be able to turn around to our venture

buddies and be like, we're short on cash. Can you float me

a cool couple million? That was never an option. That was

never going to be an option. It's very validating

because you and I took very different paths, which is not a bad thing

on either side. But we took very different paths to get to a Similar

place you guys went in for venture funding. I know you guys went through a

number of accelerators and things like that. And we just were a couple of

people in a room with a small amount of startup capital going, this is it.

This is all we got. We have no more. And it leads to the same

road. And they're both hard. That's the other thing is they're both hard. There is

not one way that is harder than the other. But even being

a venture backed founder, which sounds so much more glamorous than being a

bootstrapped elbow grease. I know, it's so glamorous. You can tell me about all the

glamorous.

Your version of venture funding and

the Princeton dude bro next to you,

his version of venture funding is very different. Even though you guys are

still receiving funding. So that's one of the things I wanted to talk

about. From just the perspective of us both building our

businesses side by side and you had a little bit of a head start on

us. What is it like to be one of the only women in

the room, probably one of the only women of color in the room.

And also being the woman of color in the room

screaming about health disparities for women. Yeah. In front

of panels full of probably mostly

white dudes who probably don't realize that women don't get a lot of

funding. And if they do, they think it's because women don't have good ideas

or who had no idea that

there could be a difference between women's mental health and men's mental health.

I think one thing that has consistently come up is

that we have received venture funding and I'm very grateful for

the success in that area. And also it has been such an eye opening experience

around how decisions get made, who's making the decisions

and what venture is really optimizing for and

things like that. But being the brown woman in the room, the woman that did

not come from a business background until I founded this company and started. Aside

from starting my own private practice, I was entirely clinical. I mean I was seeing

patients and I was figuring out workflows and developing clinics

and things like that. But I think what's been really eye opening is

that while there's a lot of venture in health care, I actually think that

healthcare and venture are very disconnected in terms of a lot of the people putting

the dollars into healthcare venture don't

know a ton about healthcare. The number of conversations I

had that were just kind of explaining how basic insurance works, how coverage

works, how these coverage decisions get made what the limitations are with

coverage, how you scale coverage, how that goes from one state to

15 states. A lot of my job very early on was

literally just laying the groundwork and laying the education that

was needed in order for people to be able to make decisions that whether or

not they wanted to invest. And I think that was pretty unique because my

expectation was that I was going to be coming into rooms with people who knew

this space. And what I found out quickly is that I had seen the

space from every angle. I'd operated the space from every angle, as an

individual, solo founder, as a mom who had gone through

the system, had four pregnancies, four

babies, one miscarriage myself. It was just like that kind of

knowledge, that kind of learning, sitting with women who've been through these

situations, going through it myself. Like, that was not

perspective that most VCs that I spoke with had. And

so before we could even get to talking about investment, I had to

paint a very clear picture and just buy people into the

idea that this was even a problem to begin with. The other side of that,

though, is in some ways it was really empowering. I think one thing

that I'll be honest, that often gets in founder way is just. Just imposter

syndrome and feeling like maybe you don't have the answer, maybe you're not going to

be able to figure it out. Maybe you're not the right person in the right

seat at the right time. And being in those rooms, it was actually

so clear to me, whatever ideas I had, that maybe I didn't belong,

that I not only belonged and there needed to be more people like me, and

this was like a mission that needed to happen. And whatever

pain I was going to go through was worth it because,

yeah, you get a lot of confidence when you're sitting with people who don't know

the space, who don't know that women's health is a problem. People who, when you

pitch to, say, oh, let me ask my wife about that. I've had six kids.

And let me go talk to my wife and see what she thinks about this.

It's incredibly empowering, actually, to sit there and say, like, hold on,

no one else is coming. I'm it. I need to go figure out this problem,

because this is what we're working with. Yeah, I had one of those experiences

not that long ago. I was talking to somebody about insurance contracting, and he

was trying to figure out how they could get confident contracts for their own business.

And this is somebody who had a whole engine behind him, and he

had Access to all sorts of funds and all of these things. And

he said to me while we were talking contracting, he was like, okay, why don't

you just tell the insurance companies they need to pay you more money? And I

was like, amazing idea. Exactly. If you hadn't thought

of that, I never would. Nobody has ever thought of that. You just

fixed insurance. How did you. And so I was like, a lot of the contracts

are rack rates, and they don't give you negotiation. And to get negotiation, you have

to do certain things, and that takes years and blah, blah, blah. And he goes,

okay, so if that doesn't work, then why don't you just collect from the insurance

and then charge the patient the difference? Mostly because I don't want to go to

jail. That's really the reason that I don't do it. But also

because that's why they have insurance. That's not how it works.

And he was like, floored. Absolutely

floored that we could operate in this system. And it's one of

those things where I say this all the time, Mental health is

not profitable. You can keep the lights on with mental health. You can

maybe make a little bit of money with mental health, but you're not going to

get the hockey stick growth that most venture capitalists are looking for.

You might get to a point where you've built a system so secure that you

can sell it for a lot of money that represents everything that you've

built and packaged up. You're not going to turn around and bill insurance and end

up with all this extra money that you can go Scrooge

McDuck through. That's not the thing. I get these. I call them Health Tech

Bros. I get them on the consulting side all the time, where they're like,

it feels like there's a simple solution to this. We should just charge more. One

of the big frustrations is when they figure out that they can't charge more. They're

like, okay, then we'll pay people less. And you're like, you're still breaking the

system. You're still. You're still participating in the broken system. You're not fixing

anything. But those are the types of questions I get all the time that you're

right. I get them. And I'm like, oh, this is why I have a job.

Because if there weren't people like me, you

would be in jail. You might still end up in jail, but not for

anything I had something to do with. I think it also translates into speed.

We have a number of competitors who are doing a lot of the same things

that we are who've been around twice as long as us, who have received

2-3x more funding than we've received. And part of what the

funding has bought them is time to iterate and pivot and try

to find the right model and figure it out as they go along. And that

kind of Runway to do that is very important. I think it's part of what

venture capital can be useful for doing. But I think that this is also the

difference when you have someone with lived experience, when you have someone who has been

wedged in the healthcare system, literally working 80 plus hours during

residency hours and hours learning all the different kinds of systems. Systems, because you have

to operate within you kind of like know and see that there's

one of two or three paths. And so you gotta go do one of

two or three paths and figure out where you can be innovative, where there's room

for innovation and where there's really not, no matter how we want it to be

different and execute. And that was definitely very much the Luna Joy story. My

co founder was also a psychiatrist, operated within the system,

built telehealth clinics. And so when we got started, we

were up and running and generating revenue within two and a half

months and starting to show that growth. I think

that's one place where venture capital can be really interesting and

important. And the other though that I think is really important for us to look

at is something that you said earlier about mental health alone not being a very

profitable business. I think that this is really important to know because I think

venture capital can be a power stick, right? It can

help you just with scale and do all the things and that

is really important. But sometimes it can also

cause blinding of the facts that are in front of you. And I think that

this has been one thing that my co founder and I had always been

very focused on. I remember when we got our first check in YC's

first 125k and we were like, wow. Because we had been

bootstrapping. We'd literally been taking money from our savings account,

right? Hard earned money from face to face time with patients.

And I remember when we got that first check it was just that feeling.

125k. Nothing is stopping us now. The world is kind

of at our feet. And then 500 and then 2 million and then 3 million.

And we had just always been so focused that despite whatever

capital we're taking in, the way in which we're building and

the things that we're building can never ignore the fact that

mental health reimbursement, next to what you need to pay people is

a low margin business. And so how do we make it personalized? How do we

make it specialized? How do we make it more effective? How do we scale this

faster? Those were all questions and those are definitely questions that we

utilized capital for, but without ever losing sight

of. This is not acquired customer at all costs and

unit economics need to be right side up. Because what

I've seen in mental health is that there's this kind of taking on venture

funding and blitz scaling. And for people who blitz scale but lose

sight of the fundamental unit economic issue and don't plan around

it, there is this key thing in that happens

of those companies, of their outcomes, their exits and things like that. And then

we've certainly seen other companies that have taken on venture funding have really

scaled and very quickly gotten a handle on the unit economics and figured out

other ways to become sticky, other services to add on and have done well.

But there is that fundamental factor in there. And I think sometimes

when you have a lot of money in the bank, too much money in the

bank, it is almost too easy to ignore some

business basics. People always talk about don't be afraid to fail, try things.

And I believe in that. Truly. I believe in that truly. I believe that you

can recover from almost anything and you learn more from failure than you do from

success. And I really do believe that. But we also don't talk a lot about

the fact that successful failure, if we can term it that bouncing back

from that usually has more to do with money. If you can fail six times

and afford to fail six times, then there's no problem failing six times. Most people

don't have that ability. You do get companies that you see pivot

more or try things more or test the waters a little bit more because they

have the money in the bank where it's not going to be catastrophic if

this thing doesn't pay off, if this thing doesn't convert, we'll try something new.

That's a function of money more than it is a function of innovation. You see

this narrative around fearlessness, around people who can just quit their jobs

and throw it all at something if you have the money to do. That's not

fear, that's capital. That's not fearlessness, that's capital. That's different.

Yeah, I think it does muddy the waters for people who like aren't in that

position and don't understand how somebody could do that. You can only

do it. If you can afford to do it. Yeah. So getting out of the

business stuff a little bit, I wanted to talk a little bit about,

yes, Luna Joy, but also mental health as a whole. You did

not stumble into running Luna Joy

on accident. Are you comfortable talking about your kind of lived experience around

that and how you ended up there? Yeah, absolutely. And

you know, it's interesting actually. For a long time I was not comfortable talking about

it and I just went and started this company and it was my sublimated response

to trauma and seeing how badly the system was. And

as I've gotten further in my journey, I've just realized having these conversations

is so much a part of what's going to ultimately change

the field. But back 11 years ago, my twins are now 11.

I was chief resident in residency, worked in

the perinatal mental health clinic. And so I was really seeing this kind of

firsthand, seeing these patients. I was learning the specialization. And then I was

also pregnant with twins that year. So I was very pregnant. I had this high

risk pregnancy. They were sharing placenta, developed a lot of anxiety

and depression. And there was so much normalization in my head around

this is what it feels like to be pregnant. High risk pregnancy. You're a resident,

you're not sleeping. All these things are happening. And

one thing that most medical doctors are really good at is just putting one foot

in front of the other and getting through. So that was my whole

speech to myself during pregnancy. Just get through it. And then I got through it.

And in my mind, in the way that I thought about it, I was like,

once I deliver the twins and if they're happy and healthy, my problems will all

go away and I will feel better. I delivered my twins, they were healthy, they

were a bit early. We had some special nursery NICU time, but they did very

well. It was the best outcome we could have hoped for. But then what

happened after that was like the darkest, most scary

nine to 12 months of my life. Brought them home and the

twins were happy. My husband was happy that we had these healthy babies. And

I had really bad depression, really bad anxiety. I

remember this vividly. I had a panic attack on Christmas

Eve. We were at my in laws and I remember

standing outside the twins door and I had this moment where I was like all

the things were flying around in my head and I could feel my breathing getting

shallow and I felt like the warmth creep up over me and I was having

these two conflicting thoughts. One is, I hope they don't wake up because we just

put them down And I cannot have the next three hours hours be two babies

screaming. And then also, I hope they don't die and stop breathing. Right. Both

of these things were simultaneously going through my brain. And I was

just recognizing very medical. I'm like, wow, this is a lot of autonomic

arousal. What's happening? And 15 minutes later, I was like, oh, my

gosh, that was a panic attack. And despite having, again, all the resources, all the

education, this is what I did for a living. I tweeted anxiety and depression.

It dawned on me that the boys were five and a half months old. I

was like, I have postpartum anxiety. This is wild.

And people around me knew. My parents definitely knew. They're both physicians. They

were coming in from out of town quite a bit. My cousins had checked

in on me, like, I hope she's okay. I'm not sure if she's okay. My

husband, a number of times like, what can I do? It just seems like you're

off. And I just was not clued in at all. I was like, this is

just what it must be. And what happened from there was also really interesting

in that I tried to get help, and it was really hard to get help.

All of the specialists were cash pay. I had these two babies

in residency. You don't get paid very much in residency. Right. My husband was just

finishing law school, just about to get a job, paying for diapers and

daycare and all the things. I could not afford to see someone for a couple

hundred dollars cash. And I saw one psychiatrist

who was general, and she had never treated postpartum

depression or anxiety. Saw a therapist who's a generalist, and

she asked me what a fourth degree tear was. I had lots of birth trauma.

And I was like, oh, gosh, I'm not in the mood to sit here and

explain to someone what the medical event was. Just to get

to, like, where I was psychologically. And that was pretty early on, but it really

started turning my wheels around, how do we serve women?

My OB was lovely. He got my voice here happy and healthy. But his

response was like, just keep going. You're gonna be okay. It was like, pat on

the shoulder, keep going. And I was like, this cannot be the way that we

introduce women into motherhood, and this cannot be the way that we

take care of people during literally the most vulnerable times in

their life. And it is a very important time, even if you just put moms

away, because by and large, we don't treat women or moms very well. And just

think about those babies this is not a great start to

their life. Right. There's lots of studies around how women who are affected with mood

disorders during pregnancy, during postpartum, just from interactions

with their babies. These things have lifelong implications. That was a bit of my

story. I eventually did find the help that I need. My best friend as a

psychiatrist. And after a couple of hooking me up with the right people,

moved from this very dark place. But going through that experience

was really eye opening. Certainly very different experiencing as a patient as

opposed to just treating someone, which I had been very used to doing at that

point. And so I went off and I built my private practice. I saw this

patient population and after a number of years of running that just felt like I

need to do more. I cannot just see the number of people that

I see a day and have that be my impact in the world. My goal

has always been to have massive impact. And I went to medical school not knowing

that I want to be a psychiatrist. But the overall goal that I feel like

I've known Since I was 4 or 5, I was a little bit of a

precocious child, is I wanted to reduce suffering. And as I started to think about,

like, how do I do that? I recognized it needed to be an in network

solution. It needed to be integrated into the system. And so

when we started Moona Joy, the picture was actually really clear.

You know, my co founder and I were just both very aligned on this is

a exactly what needs to be built. This is exactly where the pain points are.

And there was certainly a little bit of iteration. But by and large, what we

started off with our idea is 98%

of what the company is doing now. It's been a really special

journey. You've told me your story before and I think it's so powerful

to hear it from somebody who was literally entrenched in this system

and also not being served by the system. And that you

somehow both fortunately and unfortunately had to learn it as a patient to

really figure out how to build it as a clinician. I wish that hadn't happened

for you. But also we ended up with what we have now because of it.

What we have now is so important. What you've built is so important. But I

had a different experience. I don't

think I dealt with postpartum with either of my kids. I did have

really bad panic attacks when I was pregnant that would go away as soon as

I turned on a light. I would wake up in the middle of the night

with panic attack, go in the bathroom, turn on the light gone, literally

instantly gone. And my OB was like, huh, that's interesting.

And I'm like, is it just gonna be interesting until I have this kid? And

he was like, kind of. And then both of my kids were super al dente.

I've never been pregnant for more than seven and a half months, so I don't

know what that's like, but both times it happened. But also, my

dad was a psychiatrist, and he was pretty sick. He

died seven weeks after my oldest was born. They came to the hospital, and he

got to hold her when she was in the nicu. She was six weeks early.

And you see all these videos online of everybody came to see the baby, but

he came to see his baby, meaning the mother. And that's basically my dad.

And so he was sitting in the hospital room with me in his wheelchair, and

we kind of had a way that we could sit in silence together. We didn't

ever really need to be engaging. I was sitting there. I had just had a

baby like, 18 hours before. I was exhausted, and he

was old and dying, and so he was also exhausted. And he

just sits up in his wheelchair and looks at me and goes, hey. Some

women get a transient depression after they have a baby. If that happens, we'll deal

with it. I knew all about it. It wasn't like I was uninformed about

postpartum, but I just went, thanks, dad. And he was

like, yep. But it was out there.

He addressed it. It didn't need to be addressed. I didn't need a PowerPoint. I

didn't need a pamphlet. It was just, if

this happens, let me know. I don't think I ended up with postpartum. But what

I did have was with my oldest, I did try to nurse, but

she was in the nicu, and I could not produce milk

to save my life. And after the first couple of days, I would

get a very acute depression.

I was pumping. That would go away as soon as I

stopped. Yeah, it was so intense.

And I thought I was doing the right thing for my kids. That was outside

of everything else, because I had never had any intention

to nurse. It was just not something that was super important to me. I

just was fine with formula. But for some reason, once she was born, because she

was premature, because I wanted to, I don't know. I decided that I was going

to try to nurse her. I was going to try all these things, and it

didn't work. And it was so intensely stressful that it

wasn't working. And I went and talked to the lactation

consultant. And I talked to my OB and I talked to everybody and everybody said,

I don't think that's actually a thing. I just think you're probably stressed. It's tough

when you don't make milk. A year or two later I found out that there

actually is a nursing related dysthymia that nobody knew about.

Like nobody had any familiarity with. And I was like, that's

what I was dealing with. Yeah. And everybody dismissed it

as basically, they were like, if it stops when you're done pumping, then just don't

pump. And I was like, yeah, that doesn't feel like the answer. What you're talking

about is, I think, actually a really big prevalent problem, which is that we

are not educated in women's health. Even lactation

consultants, OB GYN psychiatrists, like all these people that,

myself included, that are supposed to be supportive to this population,

actually have very little training in this. The reason that I knew a lot

about reproductive psychiatry is a. I chose to take that rotation during

residency. That was not a requirement. And so lots of people left residency never

having dealt with a pregnant or postpartum woman. And then through my

own journey, did a lot of my own, like, what is literature on this?

I would like have a symptom and then I would go and read a PubMed

article to see what was out there. And usually you do a PubMed search and

27,000 things come up and you have to figure out what you want to read.

And you do PubMed searches on things related to lactation

or perimenopause. There's a not that much. And often it's like a study

in Australia or like, you know, study somewhere else. And so not

only is the information not necessarily

readily more available until more recently, but the education has

been there. I had no training in lactation

at all, going through four years of medical school and four years of residency. Our

OB colleagues, who I love very much and we work with very closely to get

people into mental health care, they are struggling as well because there is

only so much that one person can be responsible for. And they're responsible for the

baby and the birth and the mom and all the things that can go wrong

in that time period. They aren't nutritionists, they aren't

lactation consultants, they don't know all of those things. I think

menopause is a really good example of this. Obese are the women's health specialists

and only recently are more and more obese actually learning

about HRT because it was vilified for such a long time or people getting

additional training in that. And so there is a huge knowledge

gap in the system. And so that's why when I think about the VCs or

the tech bros and it's like, okay, well, let me explain this to you. And

also, the problem is not just there. It is in medicine. Medicine

has not been designed for women. Our teaching is not around the differences

and the unique needs and all that. It's just not the way

that it's built. So that's deeply problematic. It's really hard to

get information on pregnancy and

women's health when you don't study women.

And because what was it like 1994 when we said women had to be

involved in medical studies? And you wonder why there's this huge

dearth of information and why a lot of the research that we base

some of our decisions on is like 400 years old. I wish

that was an exaggeration. Who is the right person for your practice and

where can they find you? People want to reach out to me. Practice aside, I'm

always happy to lend a list of listening here. I probably spend an

inordinate amount of time actually responding to LinkedIn messages from other

female founders. I get that's not a great ROI on my time, but I

just feel like part of the reason that I've gotten to the places that I

do the same thing. Someone lent me their time, someone took me under

their wing, someone agreed to have a conversation. And so if you want to get

in touch with me, send me a message on LinkedIn if I don't respond, I'm

not trying to be mean or ignore you. I really do want to talk with

you. Just send me another message. Sometimes, like my kids usually like tug on my

shoulder a couple of times and then I will respond. But in terms of mental

health treatment, people can go to the website if they want treatment there. It's hello,

Lunajoy.com can reach out to staff

via the website via text message. Jane is a great

contact. She's our COO at lunajoy as well for any bigger

strategic partnerships and things like that. And she's Jane Yan. J

A N E y a n@hello lunajoy.com we're

fairly easy to find. Is there a patient population you specialize in

now or is it women at every stage of the journey? So, you know, when

I think about the Luna Joe population, it is predominantly pregnancy,

postpartum, reproductive kind of journey. And then we

have a large perimenopausal population. So those are the two focus

areas. But really we see women across the lifespan and we don't

not treat you if you're not a woman. By to 10% of our patients

are men. And that's because I think people just tend to bring the

people they love wherever they found trust and they found a good service. And so

we do not turn people away based upon gender. But when we think about like

the specialization of our clinicians, it is around those two areas.

Sepra, thank you so much for coming and hanging out with me today. I love

hearing your story. I also love our overlap, but

in completely differing ways. And the fact that I

think we need more relationships like this out

in the founder community or just maybe like more visibility. I bet there's

a lot that we don't even know about because to something that you said.

Almost every time that I've asked for support from somebody I

know or somebody I don't know in this community, they've almost

always said yes, even if it's somebody that I just met. Especially being a first

time founder. But being a founder is such a unique experience

in that it's very much glorified, it's very much

made to sound very pretty. But the reality is that

99% of the minutes are super hard. And

the only person who's going to understand that as well as you do is somebody

else who has been in those trenches. And so having you in the last several

years has been invaluable to my own mental health. Not just as a friend, not

as a kiddosha. I think just highlighting these relationships, we need more of

them. We need people, we need founders who are getting together with other founders.

Not to talk strategy, not even though that will be

part of it. Not to talk about scaling or

building, but just to say, hey, your experience and my experience, even though we're in

totally different fields, are so similar and you can do it. And here's

why, or here's how I got through that, or here's how supporting somebody

who does literally exactly what I do made my business better.

Because that's by and large my experience. It was lovely having you.

Everybody please go check out the Luna Joy website. Cipra is on LinkedIn. That's where

I met her. So I'm lucky in that way too.

And now we'll go to Allison who has this week's

small talk. All right, so we have a small talk from

Rodney in Texas. Something has shifted in me over the

last two years and I cannot explain it. I am

a 44 year old former Marine who Now tears up at and dog food

commercials at the end of Pixar movies at my

nephew's school play. I am not complaining. If

anything, it feels like something opened up that used to be locked, but I don't

have language for it yet, and I'm not sure what changed. My

wife thinks it's beautiful. My brothers think it's hilarious.

I mostly think it's confusing. Have you ever noticed

a shift in yourself emotionally, not clinically, where

something just softened? How do you make sense

of it? I have absolutely noticed that in myself, especially as I get older

and have, like, specific life experiences or get to parts of my life that I

hadn't been to before. I've always been the type of person who would, like, take

people in, but I didn't expect

how abruptly that faucet would

turn on after having kids as soon as I had my first

kid. I mean, we're talking about, like, days in, like, not far enough in

to even have any understanding of what parenthood actually is. And

I wasn't particularly like this when I was pregnant. It's not like it was just

like this emotional, hormonal thing. And it has never stopped.

I remember after having my oldest, she was probably like a year or year and

a half old, and we sat down and watched the Lion King. And there was

a line very early in the movie that I've heard a thousand

times. Lion King came out when I was in first grade. I've watched this movie.

I know this movie from start to. To finish. And there was a line

very early in the movie, and I'm just like. I just started, like,

leaking from my eyes nonstop. I couldn't figure out

why that line meant so much more to me today than it did

10 years, 20 years before. And then I very quickly realized it

was because I now had a small human. I would be leaving if this happened.

And that was, like, completely impossible to understand.

But even further back than that, my.

My oldest was six weeks early. She was still in the

nicu. And I had run over to my mom's house to check on my

dad because my dad was very, very sick at the time. And while I was

sitting at their kitchen table before going over to spend time with my

daughter on the news, they had a story about a baby who had

been found, like, left on a porch or something, and he

was in bad shape, and he was only a couple of hours

old when they found him. And it was some neighbor's apartment porch. Like,

somebody just walked by, dropped this baby in love. And

historically, I would have looked at that, I would have perceived

that story and been like, wow, that's. That's awful. Like, I can't believe they would

do that to a baby. And then they said that

the baby was in the same NICU that my child was in. And I

swear to God, I was, like, getting my keys. I got to go get a

second baby. As far as I was concerned, that was perfectly

reasonable. I'm gonna go get this is. There's a baby. I have one. I

could have two. They're in the same place. Somebody didn't want it.

I want it because I want all babies now. All babies are my babies now,

and I'm just gonna go get this baby. And obviously, I. I knew that that

wasn't realistic and that there was other things involved in it, but as far as

I was concerned, like, I. I got room for one. I got room for

two, and I will take them, and I will love them, and I will have

them forever. And I

feel like that baby ended up getting adopted by one of the nurses or something.

Who was caring for him in the nicu. I don't know, but I just remember

every time walking into the nicu, very intent on seeing my own daughter,

obviously, but also, like, looking around like, you want to come home with me?

I'll take you. You need a good home. I got a good home. Any babies.

You want babies. Any babies need home, send them to my way. I got them.

And that was, like, instant. I mean, my kid probably was less than a week

old when I was like, when I. When it was just, yes, give me all

the babies. I also.

I'm now remembering, remember my dad being

relatively stoic when I was growing up. He would

share his affection. He would share stories he would tell you. When

he was angry, he would tell you. And things made him sad. But

it was never like, I'm sad, and I'm gonna sit and be sad. It was

always like, well, shit happens, and move on. I had never seen

him get overly emotional. And then when he was probably in his

60s, he was still working at that point, he got

this infection or something. I don't remember what. And it made him really

sick. And after that, he cried all

the time. And not like, I'm sad cry. Like, literally, I had

never seen him crying before. And the first time I saw it, I thought he

was choking because he couldn't speak, and

it scared me. And then I figured out after,

like, 15 or 20 seconds that he was just choked up. He just. And I.

I didn't know what to do with it. I had never seen him before. And

from that point on, for, I want to say the last 15 years of his

life about. Just about.

He was very, very emotional.

He would cry at things. He would get emotional at things

that I. I had never seen him get emotional at before. He had

many wells that I had never seen before. And once we understood that, he

just. It like, unlocked something in him about, I

don't know, the preciousness of life or. Or how

much he loved the people who showed up to take care of him or something,

I don't know. After that, he just. He just

was much, much more. He was

capable of emoting in a way that he never had been before. He was also.

He wasn't a Marine, but he was Navy attached to Marines. So, like, maybe that's

like. Maybe that's like a progression of

advanced military service masculinity or something. You, like, you hit

an age and they're like, okay, you get your tears now. I don't know.

That's a gross oversimplification. If it's troublesome,

if it's a problem, I would go talk to somebody because there are a couple

of neurological conditions that can cause that. You would

see other stuff too. So it would be unlikely that that would be the only

symptom. But, like, doesn't hurt to talk to somebody. But if it's just something

that you're getting used to and you're not used to accessing this

part of your emotional framework and you're just figuring out how to

navigate it, and maybe that just takes time. Maybe it just

takes time. But I think the men who can process

what they're feeling inside, who do it openly, who do it in front

of other men, are the key to solving

so many of the masculinity issues we have, I'd say, in this country, but probably

in this world. And there is. There is nothing

biological that makes women more emotional than men.

It's just the way we've been socialized to believe that it's

okay for women to be more emotional than men, and it is okay for women

to be emotional, but it's not an either or. Men experience

trauma, they experience loss, they experience grief, they experience all of it.

And being able to access that and process that is what keeps you

safe and healthy. And the fact that we have spent so much time

not allowing the men in our society to access those things and process

those things because it was somehow common on their masculinity is

bullshit. So if you found it, great. If it's

interfering with things. If it's popping up at unusual times, like if you

see a commercial for dog food where a dog

gets a new home and you're happy for the dog and that makes

you tear up, that's fine. That's totally

normal. It might be something you're not used to, but it's

not like there are people who are just like that. If you find

yourself crying mid sentence from something that doesn't feel like

it's accessing any emotional part of you, I would

go talk to a professional. But other than

that, enjoy the cry. It's cathartic, and you deserve it.

Thanks for being here, guys. Have a good day. Love you. Meaning?

I'm sure there are others. I know. Obviously there are others. There's like

a whole list of rules.