Welcome, friend!
Why Voicenotes From A Friend?
Because I needed a place to say out loud what we’re all thinking inside.
I was raised to be a liar. I was taught to white lie so that I wouldn’t upset anyone. I especially was not permitted to share our dirty laundry outside the family.
For 35 years I had no friends because I was so afraid of what revealing my dirty laundry would do.
Man was I lonely.
It was horrible.
Eventually, I got tired of pretending.
I decided to run a little honesty experiment. What if I just told the truth—unedited, uncurated, and out loud?
Something crazy happened when I started to do it.
Lots of people told me that they, too, could relate to what I was feeling, and that my sharing made them feel less alone.
This isn’t a podcast—it’s an invitation to explore friendship.
A virtual one, maybe, but real all the same.
So what will I talk about?
Anything that feels real to me–motherhood, surfing metaphors, trying to figure out who I am, crochet hobbies, aging parents, teenage kids, female friendship, and skincare products.
Random?
Kind of, but not really.
Honestly, this is the way I talk to my friends.
Me and my closest friends are equal parts deep and ridiculous, and that’s just how I like it. Coping with a total loss of identity + Kim Kardashian's eyebrows in one conversation?
Yup, sign me up.
Who are you again?
Oh right sorry, I’m Vanessa.
My biomarkers are:
I’m a mom of five teenagers and wife to one awesome man living in New York. I did the overachieving thing of going to Harvard and working at Goldman Sachs and then continued to overachieve when I had five babies in six years. It was a raging success story until the whole perform-so-other-people-will-admire-you thing just…
Broke me.
So now I live by one fundamental principle:
I live my life every day solving for how I want to hopefully die one day: surrounded by the people I love with zero regrets.
Are you going to annoy me?
Hell = too many emails in your overflowing inbox.
I get it.
I don’t want that for you
(or myself).
The point of this is to make you feel better, not add to your workload. That’s why I am keeping the Voicenotes short, 5-10 minutes max.
I want you to be able to listen to them on your walk to work or as you tidy your kitchen, and if you miss one, don’t worry.
I never want to linger in your inbox and make you feel guilty like that big stack of unread books on your nightstand (get rid of those by the way).
I want your weekly Voicenote to feel like a hug from a friend.
I see you.
I support you.
I get it.
Let’s crush life (or at least muddle through it) together.
Why audio posts?
I drop my daughter off at school and walk the ten blocks home every day. Inevitably, I’d have a full TED talk in my head by the time I was home.
I’d want to call a friend to share my thoughts, but people have lives and even my ride or dies can’t always pick up the phone at 8am on a Wednesday.
So I started emptying my thoughts into a microphone and Voicenotes was born: the most unedited, unfiltered version of me.
Let’s be friends
Life is hard, and we feel alone more often than we admit. But sharing our struggles makes us feel less alone.
I want this space to feel like a group chat with your besties.
I really (truly) love to hear your stories. Substack makes it easy to share in the comments—and I read every one.
I can’t wait to get to know you.
