Disability, guilt, and accountability (plus Beyoncé)

This week goes straight for the tender spots: disability, guilt, surrender, messy healing, cultural expectations, and accountability — plus the pop culture spiral that somehow helps us tell the truth about being human in a world that keeps demanding performance.

This episode is for you if you’re navigating chronic illness, disability, or a season of low capacity — and you’re struggling with the guilt that shows up when you can’t “power through” like you used to.

Taina opens with a vulnerable (and infuriatingly relatable) mess about navigating life with a disability while recovering from intense medical trauma — and the complicated guilt that comes with needing care instead of giving it. Becky names what’s underneath it all: grief for the life we thought we’d have.

What follows is a wide-open, nuanced conversation about surrender, agency, capitalism’s lies about productivity, and the lifelong work of unlearning parentification.

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In this episode, we spiral into:

• Disability, medical trauma, and the guilt that comes with needing care
• Grief for the life we thought we’d have (and the version of “capacity” we lost)
• Surrender vs. giving up — and the difference between agency and performance
• Capitalism’s lies about productivity and worth
• Unlearning parentification and the instinct to over-function
• What accountability actually looks like (and why “nuance” gets flattened online)
• Identity + industry power: why publishing and Hollywood don’t operate the same
• Pop culture discourse as a window into belonging and moral perfectionism
• Spotify Wrapped: joy, community, surveillance capitalism, and FOMO (all at once)
• Beyoncé & Jay-Z at a Brandy concert… and the chaotic internet expectations spiral

It’s tender. It’s political. It’s petty. It’s deeply liberatory. In other words: peak Messy Liberation.