MILK Podcast: Lost and Found, Season 3 Episode 5: Sexual Assualt, Survivor Advocacy and Activism with Marissa Hochstetter

Activist Marissa Hoechstetter joins Mallory in the MILK Studio. Marissa is a survivor advocate who writes and speaks about sexually abusive doctors, enabling institutions, and corrupt politicians. She’s been fighting for change since her own reports of assault by an OB/GYN received inadequate responses from the medical system and law enforcement.

Marissa spearheaded a successful campaign in New York City to allow patients to remove the names of abusive doctors from birth certificates. She has given testimony on medical abuse to lawmakers and medical boards, and she founded Reform the Sex Crimes Unit, a group calling for increased transparency and accountability within the Manhattan DA’s Sex Crimes Unit and Special Victims Bureau. She is also a member of RAINN’s Speakers Bureau and the Patient Safety Action Network’s Medical Board Roundtable. Marissa is a senior advancement and communications professional for non-profit organizations and lives with her family in Massachusetts. Follow her @mhoechstetter and reformthescu.com

MILK Podcast: Lost and Found, Season 3 Episode 4: Mystery, Motherhood, and Moving through Loss with Novelist Joanna Hershon

Joanna Hershon is in the MILK Studio with Mallory, talking about her latest book, St. Ivo. ˆThey talk about a strange incident on the subway that happened to Joanna and prompted this book of fiction, about having children 9 years apart and about Joanna's former careers as playwright and actress.

Joanna Hershon Photo by Justin Schein

St. Ivo, a novel about two couples who reconnect after a loss, after a series of miscommunication and secrets, has received excellent reviews -- including a rave from the New York Times. Joanna is the also author of the novels Swimming, The Outside of August, The German Bride, and A Dual Inheritance.

Her writing has appeared in Granta, The New York Times, One Story, Virginia Quarterly Review, and two literary anthologies, Brooklyn Was Mine and Freud’s Blind Spot. She is an adjunct assistant professor in the Creative Writing Department at Columbia University and lives in Brooklyn with her husband, the painter Derek Buckner, their twin sons, and their daughter. Follow her on instagram @JoannaHershon

MILK Podcast: Lost and Found, Season 3 Episode 3: Ready or Not, Overparenting and How Not to Do It with Dr. Madeline Levine, PhD.

Dr. Madeline Levine, PhD, joins Mallory in the MILK Studio. Madeline is a clinician, consultant, educator and the author of the New York Times bestsellers, The Price of Privilege and Teach Your Children Well.

Mallory and Madeline talk about anxiety in children and in parents, about how overparenting is a major issue for launching successful and happy kids, and how flexibility will be key as our kids launch and eventually enter the work force.

Madeline is a co-founder of Challenge Success, a project of the Stanford Graduate School of Education that provides families and schools with the practical, research-based tools they need to create a more balanced and academically fulfilling life for kids. She also is a consultant to BDT & Company and their clients, a merchant bank that advises and invests in founder and family-led companies. She has appeared on The Today Show, Good Morning America, CBS This Morning, Fox & Friends, Nightline, 20/20, Dateline, MSNBC, and on numerous NPR radio shows. She has been interviewed by and written original pieces for the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The San Francisco Chronicle, and many other outlets and speaks widely around parenting and education.

She lives in San Francisco with her husband and is the proud mother of three grown sons and a newly minted grandmother.

MILK Podcast: Lost and Found, Season 3 Episode 2: NYC Hustling, Flexibility, and Boy Momming with Peloton Yoga Instructor Kristin McGee

Peloton Yoga Instructor Kristin McGee joins Mallory in the MILK Podcast Studio to talk about her years as an actress, pivoting to yoga and fitness, and how she's found her perfect career sweetspot at Peloton.

Growing up in small town Idaho, Kristin had big dreams of pursuing dance and acting in New York, and became one of the most sought after and recognized yoga instructors in the city. Throughout her career, Kristin has been a pioneer in making yoga more accessible.

Photo Courtesy of Peloton

She has starred in yoga DVD’s, has privately trained celebrities and written books about the value of the yoga in everyday life. As a mom of three boys, Kristin strongly believes that just a few minutes of yoga a day can bring more balance and harmony to your life.

Kristin and Mallory talk about how moms can reconnect to their bodies and to their (new) selves post partum, and how her life and career has changed since she became a parent. Follow @KristinMcGee on Instagram.

MILK Podcast: Lost and Found, Season 3, Episode 1: Midlife Limbo, Death, Dogs and Separation Anxiety with Author Laura Zigman

Laura Zigman joins Mallory in the MILK Studio to talk about her latest novel “Separation Anxiety,” some difficult creative and personal years that led to the book’s publication, and how we talk about women’s mid-life crises.

The author of “Animal Husbandry,” “Dating Big Bird,” “Piece of Work,” and “Her,” contributor to The New York Times and many other publications, and a ghost writer of books she can’t tell you about, Laura’s writing is a gift at this moment in time.

Laura writes from a truthful, humorous and chaotic place that lays bare the secret of adulthood: that most of us have no idea what the hell is going on. She opens MILK Podcast Season 3 with her stories of loss and finding her way through them. Follow her @LauraZigman on IG.

MILK Podcast: The Loss Season, Episode 12: Banksy Angels, Frolicking Dolphins, and Our Friend Heather

Mallory is joined in the MILK Studio by Moms she Already Knows: Veracelle, Lindsay, Kerri, Meg, Leslie and Stephanie discuss the loss of their dear friend, Heather Wheat Tilev, who died in February of 2019.

Heather is the blonde in the hat. Photo taken by a timer propped up on something executed by Lindsay, February 2017

The culmination of The Loss Season explores how grief can manifest in a tight tribe of women, and Mallory talks to the MILKs about Heather's life and death. Heather's recent loss has devastated the group, as well as her family and community, and the women speak to Mallory, in interviews over the past 9 months, about her life, her work, her vibe, and her legacy.

They remember trips they took, running into her other on the street, and laughing over group text -- all the mundane things one does not realizing it will be the last time. They also speak honestly about the variety of ways they cope individually and within the group, and how motherhood is the ultimate lens for loss. 

MILK Podcast: The Loss Season, Episode 11 Losing Both Parents, Book Clubs, Memoirs and Old Friends

Author Dina Bryk Pearl joins Mallory in the MILK Studio. Dina is a former strategy consultant, a graduate of Cornell University and Columbia Business School, and the mother of three kids.

Dina’s parents, Sy and Carol Bryk, passed away in quick succession at the end of Dina’s twenties. Despite the depth and heartbreak of those losses, Dina used the strong relationships she had with them to find her way through the grief, while beginning a new life as a wife and mother. Several years ago, then in her 40’s, Dina took a writing workshop and wrote "Raised," a deeply felt memoir about losing her parents at a formative age. The book explores of the foundation of love, honesty, and humor she absorbed from her late parents, and how Dina has found strength and wisdom to parent her own children and herself.

MILK Podcast: The Loss Season, Episode 10: Love and Conflict in Female Friendships, The Shedding of Selves, and #ClogLife with Author Lauren Mechling

Lauren Mechling joins Mallory in the MILK Studio to discuss her novel “How Could She.” They talk about changing and losing jobs and friendships, how clogs played a role in a cultivating a creative community, and about podcasts and the joy of a female only dinner party.

Photo by NIna Subin

Lauren has written for The New York Times. The Wall Street Journal, Slate, The New Yorker online and Vogue, where she writes a regular book column. She’s worked as a crime reporter and metro columnist for The New York Sun, a young adult novelist, and a features editor at The Wall Street Journal.

She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two children. Learn more at www.laurenmechling.com.

MILK Podcast: The Loss Season, Episode 9: Frogs with Feelings, Dealing with Divorce, Blending Families and Other Transitions with Children’s Book Author Nadine Harumi

Children’s Book Author Nadine Harumi joins Mallory in the MILK Studio. Nadine is the author of the Freeda the Frog™ children’s book series, which follows a frog family as they encounter various life issues or different types of family situations, including divorce, blending families, transitioning to a new town, and the death of a loved one.

These books are for parents, educators and psychologist to open up a conversations with kids about difficult real life events, and have all won the Gold Mom’s Choice Award for excellence in the picture book category.

Nadine has gone through a divorce herself and is now re-married with five children. She has been a member of the Society of Children’s Book Writers & Illustrators and the Independent Book Publishers Association. Aside from writing, she also teaches Restorative Yoga and is a practicing attorney.

The Freeda The Frog books are sold on various websites (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Target, Walmart, Books A Million), and can also be found in select Barnes & Noble and other bookshops. More information about her books, froggy interviews and news & events can be found at www.freedathefrog.com. Follow Freeda on Instagram, Facebook & Twitter @freedathefrog.

MILK Podcast: The Loss Season, Epsiode 8: Vows, Contracts, Divorce and Death and How Writing Saves with Molly Rosen Guy

Molly Rosen Guy is in the MILK Studio with Mallory. Molly is a writer, editor, teacher, author, mother of young daughters, and truth teller.

As Creative Director and Founder of Stone Fox Bride, a wedding dress company with a cult Instagram account, Molly was responsible for the hashtag #stonefoxrings which created over five thousand original engagement stories on her feed. Her book, Love, Lust, and Wedding Planning for the Wild at Heart was published by Random House. When her father, Robert, got diagnosed with leukemia in the summer of 2017, Molly was also filing for a divorce from her husband of 8 years.

Photo by @mikeyneff

 After her father's passing, she started a new instagram account, @mollyrosenguy where she wrote daily, for one year, about her dad’s diagnosis, rapid decline, and death. Her words about the gritty realities of love, anger and pain in death and in divorce were riveting, and especially compelling as a daughter and as a mother.

Named one of the “Most Creative People” by Fast Company and Refinery29’s “Top 30 Visionaries,” Molly is also contributing editor at Vogue and founder of the Brooklyn Writers Collective where she teaches nonfiction writing workshops and retreats. She is also at work on a memoir about her dad and can be found @stonefoxride and @mollyrosenguy.