Unfolded with Lisa Armstrong

Today I heard her before I saw her. A crow. Calling from somewhere above me. Not a gentle sound. A command. I looked up. This episode is for Susan. My best friend of forty-three years. My Salt. My witness. The woman who saw me when I could not see myself clearly, who sat beside versions of me I wanted to run away from, and who stayed close enough to keep seeing. She passed away recently. And I am still learning the language of a world where she is not physically in it. This episode is not a e...

In this episode of Unfolded, I trace the road of a body I was never given a map for. From getting my period in third grade, to learning what it meant to be seen and desired, to intimacy, shame, choice, and the unexpected terrain of perimenopause, I look back at the moments that decided what my body meant before I could. There is humor here, because there has to be. Menstrual belts. Wide World of Sports. Planned Parenthood parking lots. Dry wells. Ladybirds. And eventually a 1965 Corvette Stin...

It started with a package of cotton drawers in the Health and Beauty aisle at ShopRite. Not exactly where you expect a revelation to happen. But here we are. In this episode, Lisa Armstrong traces the full arc of a woman's body through the one thing we never talk about honestly. What we wear underneath. From diapers to cotton to silk to lace to G-strings that had absolutely no business being anywhere near us, and back again to cotton. Each decade a different answer to the same question we for...

It was a Sunday. My mother, who is ninety years old, asked me to help her bathe. And if I am honest, it was not the best time. In this episode, Lisa Armstrong takes us inside one of the most ordinary and sacred moments of caregiving. The irritation that arrived before the love did. The resentment she did not expect. The laughter about gourds and pocketbooks that came out of nowhere. And the moment she looked into her mother's bluish gray eyes and saw something quietly, gently moving away from...

There was a man in my leadership program. His name was Patrick. One afternoon, he stopped me mid-sentence and said four words. "You did it again." I told him I had no idea what he was talking about. And that was the truth. But something in me went still. Because some part of me did know. I just did not have language for it yet. This is the episode where Lisa Armstrong begins. Not the therapist. Not the coach. Not the woman with the credentials. The woman. The one who spent years managing othe...