Middle Fingers Up

Today is a solo Gup Shup conversation.

No guest. No expert. Just me sharing what's been sitting heavily on my mind as a parent, a racialized woman, and someone who spends a lot of time thinking about the kind of humans we're helping our children become.

This episode starts with hockey, but it isn't really about hockey. It's about culture.

It's about what happens in dressing rooms, group chats, classrooms, and friend circles when adults aren't around. It's about the gap between what we think our children are experiencing and what they're actually...

We took a short break this week and spent some time digging through the archives. In the process, we found the unreleased video recording of EP.100 with JRDN! 

@MFUPodcast on YouTube and Spotify
There are a few minutes of audio only at the beginning. The video kicks in around the 3:36 mark.

Once again, thank you to JRDN for being part of such an important milestone for the podcast. We're now on our way to Episode 200, and this week we thought we'd share this special find with all the JRDN fans out there.

We hear it all the time: What we do as parents today will impact our children's tomorrow. Okayyyyyy, and what does that actually mean? 

As a mom raising two teenage boys, I keep coming back to something: I'm just one of the many voices shaping who my children are becoming. So where are they getting their information? Who is influencing how they see themselves, other people, and the world? And what am I teaching them through the way I show up, not just through what I say?

I invited Moses Farrow b...

There are things we carry for years without realizing where we learned them. The ways we try to fit in. The parts of ourselves we change to feel accepted. The line "be the bigger person, don't say anything"  The assumptions we make about ourselves and other people and so on.

Sometimes, it takes hearing someone else's story to recognize parts of our own.
In this episode I sit down with Judith Lam Tang, author of Muted Colours: Uncovering Internalized Racism on the Journey to Reclaiming Racial Identity, for a conversation that is very personal to m...

After taking some time away to look after my own mental health and navigate the absolute roller coaster of perimenopause, it feels really good to be back having conversations with real people about real life.
And we're starting with something that touches every single one of us. Grief.
My guest, Shermin, lost her daughter, Manal, at just 18 and a half years old.

 Since then, she's become certified in grief coaching and trained in trauma-informed practices, hoping to help others better understand grief and how we support those experiencing it.

This conversation isn't o...

PART 5 OF A 5-PART SERIES

Okay, here we are. The final conversation in this series with Moses Farrow.

We've talked about the story, the system, the language and the impact.

And now we're bringing it all together. We talk about what happens when you start seeing things differently.

Moses talks about false narratives, the layers of pain that can come with separation and loss, and why so much of that pain can go unrecognized.

We also get into some bigger questions about what we do with what we've...

PART 4 OF A 5-PART SERIES

In Part 4 we're getting into the impact.

We talk about adoption trauma, identity, loss, truth and some of the things happening in the world around us.

Moses also shares some really personal stories about the loss of three siblings.

We also get into some bigger territory, like how are some of these things connected?

Connect with Moses:

Website: MosesFarrow.com  
YouTube: Adoption Deprogrammed 

Instagram: @mosesafarrow

Support the show

If yo...

PART 3 OF A 5-PART SERIES

This time, we're talking about language. The words we use and the meanings we attach to them.
Take gratitude, for example.
When we talk about adoption, words like saved, chosen, lucky, grateful, better life and forever family come up a lot.

Moses says: “Really pay attention to our language.”
So that's what we're doing. Just talking about it. Asking questions. Looking at some of the words we might not think twice about.

Why do we say it that way?

Connect with Moses:

We...

PART 2 OF A 5-PART SERIES

In Part 1, Moses Farrow and I went back into the history of adoption and started unpacking the “better life” narrative.

In Part 2, we move from the story to the system. What happens behind the scenes?

We talk about how easy  child removal has become over years  through poverty, missionary work, White  saviorism, cultural bias and the role of hospitals, churches and social services.

I also bring in some of what I witnessed during my years working in mental health and child welfare, because some of thes...

PART 1 OF A 5-PART SERIES

Okay so we thought we were talking about 'adoption'.

But the more Moses Farrow and I talked, the more I realized there was so much more we needed to understand. I got the sense based on the feedback from Moses' previous time on the pod, that you wanted more of this conversation too.

So we decided to do a 5 part series. 
In Part 1, we're going back into the history to understand how we got here. How did we get to a place where "adoption is the o...

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 taught that speaking up, pushing back, expressing frustration, or holding boundaries feels disrespectful. And becau...

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 survive by being “good.” But underneath that conversation was something bigger around identity, belonging, a...

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 realized I didn’t want this to feel like a typical interview.

I kept thinkin...

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 and content creator based in A...

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, and sacrifice are often normalized in immigrant households and how those patterns quietly follow people into adulthood.

This episode examines why so many children of im...

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 what that actually looks like in real time, how...

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 “Do I belong, or am I just fitt...

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 family, culture, and the quiet weight of societal expectations.

From wr...

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 songs can...

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 different things are from how we grew up.

Now I find myself askin...

This episode is about shifting the way we think about our bodies — even as our day-to-day bumps up against old rules, comparisons, and messages (or should we say misogynies) we’ve inherited. 

We are here to challenge  the pressure to look a certain way, diet culture, celebrity trends, or "finishing the plate". It’s about noticing what our bodies are actually carrying and listening without shame.

Have you ever looked in the mirror and thought, “How did my body get here?” Life happens: stress, grief, motherhood, getting older, carrying more than you used to. And yet the advi...

Safe space. You’ve heard the term everywhere lately — but what does it actually mean? Who is responsible for the 'safety' part of the space?

In this gup shup, we sit with a phrase that shows up everywhere lately: safe space.

From social media to wellness circles to community conversations, the language is everywhere — but the experience doesn’t always match the label.

Looking at the roots of safe spaces in Black civil rights organizing, feminist consciousness-raising groups, and queer and trans communities, alongside trauma-informed practice and psychological safety research, we explore what it reall...

In this episode of Middle Fingers Up, we sit down with Rama Swamy, a pelvic floor practitioner and physiotherapist who immigrated from India, for a necessary and overdue conversation about women’s health — the parts we were never taught to understand, name, or advocate for.

Drawing from her lived experience with pregnancy, birth, and postpartum recovery, Rama shares how cultural taboos, education gaps, and the normalization of women’s pain led her to specialize in pelvic health. Together, we unpack how silence — at home, in culture, in schools, and in healthcare systems — teaches women to endure rather than inves...

In this episode of Middle Fingers Up, I’m in conversation with Farida D, author of The Shit That Made Me a Feminist — a body of work that names the lived realities many women are taught to swallow quietly.

Out of respect for her safety, this episode is audio-only.  Farida’s work — which centers women of color, power, rage, and structural inequality — does not allow her the privilege of visibility without risk. And yet, she has chosen not to stop. She continues to speak, write, and show up for women, even when doing so requires navigating...

The one where we stop pretending everything’s fine just to keep the peace.

In this episode, I sit down with Kam Bassier  (from Episode 136: “You’re Not Lazy, You’re Burnt Out”) to talk about a tension so many BIPOC adults are carrying right now:

Why are we — the kids of immigrant parents, BIPOC millennials and Gen Z — having conversations our families never could?
Why does naming pain feel like betrayal?
And what does breaking cycles actually look like in real life?

We talk about harmony culture in collectivist...