Meet Bridget

"If You Are Stagnant, You Breed Disease" — MaKenna Bernardino, The Skullptress @makennabernardino

MaKenna Bernardino, The Skullptress, is a body sculpting and lymphatic drainage practitioner who works in homes across LA and OC. With her table in tow and a backpack full of tools, she works with a singular philosophy: Your body is NOT working against you. Her job is to get stagnant bodies moving. She works with women of every body type, shape and size, bucking the common misconception that body sculpting is solely to "make skinny girls skinnier". Over the years, she has worked with countless women who have experienced major weight loss, post-operative clients, women in perimenopause, and women whose concerns have gone underappreciated or underwhelmingly overlooked. She meets people where they are. A fellow Redding native (like Asha!), MaKenna spent much of her youth, fishing, hiking, snowboarding, and playing competitive soccer. To this day, it's still her happy place, heading back home to the mountains to decompress between awards seasons. It's the same place that helped her hone many of the skills through her teen experiences. From contracting mononucleosis and spending an entire summer bedridden to an eventual Hashimoto's Thyroiditis diagnosis, came years of self education and the continual pursuit of the understanding of her own body. This episode dives into MaKenna's journey, and how the body and the wellness she had to fight for eventually became the foundation of how she treats and cares for other women now. This one is warm, honest, and so so real. If thyroid health or autoimmune disease is something you are navigating personally, your own advocacy matters. NAMI.org | Call or text 988 if you need additional support. 🎙️ Meet Bridget | Season 6, Episode 169

"Same Style, Different Size" — Sabrina Chazen, Size-Inclusive Shopping Expert @sabrinachazen

Sabrina Chazen is the creator behind The Carpool Catwalk and the hashtag #samestyledifferentsize. She is a size-inclusive shopping expert who sits in the top one percent of creators on LTK and the top one hundred on Shop My. Her Instagram is a full-time job and her DMs are how she does most of the real work of it. In this conversation, Sabrina and Asha talk about what it actually means to build a career around inclusive sizing, how the Carpool Catwalk got its name, and what Sabrina makes of the body positivity versus body neutrality conversation online and why she does not fully buy into either framing. Her position: two truths can exist at once. You can feel uncomfortable in your body and still wear the bathing suit. You can want to make changes and still go to Hawaii. You do not have to love your body every day. You also do not have to stop living. She also goes back. Sabrina grew up in Newport Beach, played water polo, was genuinely happy as a teenager, and found as an adult that she has received more negative attention about her size than she ever did as a kid. She was thrown off a podcast once for saying that. The host wanted a story about being bullied for her weight. Sabrina said: my story was happy. That counts too. She also talks about what she is learning right now through watching her daughter navigate middle school social dynamics, what loyalty means to her, and why she has never once, as the biggest gossip in Newport Harbor High School history, gone on the internet to talk about a stranger. 🎙️ Meet Bridget | Season 6, Episode 168

MEAN GIRLS - On Social Aggression and Online Dynamics with Teen Therapist Christina King, LMFT

We call it the Mean Girls episode. Christina King's first note is that she does not really believe in mean girls. She believes in mean behavior, which is different and actually more useful to know. In this conversation, Christina walks through what healthy friendships actually look like for teen girls, where closeness tips into enmeshment, and what is really going on when social aggression shows up in middle school. She explains why the fastest route to social inclusion is sometimes exclusion, how girls use cruelty to climb a social ladder they did not build, and why the same behavior looks different depending on whether it is relational or social in nature. She also gives parents and teens practical tools: the TALK acronym for navigating conflict, the three C's (curiosity, connection, correction, in that order), and the front stage and backstage framework for understanding why you have to earn your way into the real version of someone before they let you in. The digital piece gets its own section. Texts, social media, phone calls, the AIM era that Asha and Keshiia both survived. Christina's bottom line: when in doubt, put the phone down. A conflict that is escalating over text almost always gets worse before it gets better. Face to face is almost always the move. And the hardest thing she tells parents: the way to protect your kid is by giving them the skills to protect themselves. Going scorched earth on Katie is not one of those skills. 🎙️ Meet Bridget | Season 6, Episode 167 Part 3 of 3 — Teen Mental Health Awareness Resources: NAMI.org | Call or text 988 @christinakingtherapy

"The Better I Do My Job, the More Lives We Save" — Erin McCarthy, Chief of Staff at CoreViva

Erin McCarthy's career path goes: Harvard, McKinsey, woodworking apprenticeship in Belgium, sustainable furniture company in LA, Ruggable, professional volleyball in Norway, and now Chief of Staff at Coreviva. She is the first to tell you it looks a little chaotic from the outside. But she has also learned to trust the through-line: she kept going until she found work that actually means something to her every single day. In this episode, Asha and Erin talk about what it actually means to be a Chief of Staff, how that role looks different at every company, and why Coreviva, a preventative healthcare company with the most comprehensive full body MRI on the market, is the place she finally landed and did not want to leave. Asha shares that she has had a Coreviva scan herself and brought her own mom in, and they talk about what it really means to be proactive about your health rather than reactive. They also go back. Erin grew up in Manhattan Beach, was a self-described leprechaun at her first soccer practice, lost a little of her fearlessness in middle school when the popular girls stopped including her without any notice, and found her way back through volleyball, drama class, and a Harvard roommate situation that required her to go out on a limb and tell people she wanted to stay with them. Asha also shares that she had thyroid cancer in 2018. It is part of why she cares so deeply about proactive health and why this episode matters to her personally. The quality Erin named at the end: her body, and learning to love it. Her mom always told her she would. She finally does. 🎙️ Meet Bridget | Season 6, Episode 166 Learn more about Coreviva: coreviva.com

"Strength Bleeds Into Every Single Aspect of Your Life" — Chelsea Leigh, Holistic Nutritionist & Women's Strength Coach @chelsleigh

"71 Lines on the Card. 1,002 Ways to Win." — Jodie McCollum, Founder of Mahjong OC

Jodie McCollum learned Mahjong in 2023 at a friend's house in Dallas. She came back to Orange County, taught a neighbor group as a dare, walked away from that first class completely invigorated, and thought: I wonder if there is a demand for this. There was. Within a year she had taught 175 classes, reached 2,000 students, built a team of nine, and started expanding to San Diego, LA, and potentially London. In this conversation, Jodie talks about what it took to build Mahjong OC from a Friday afternoon game into a real business, how her corporate HR and marketing background all came back to her at once after years on a shelf, and why she thinks Mahjong is having a moment not because it is trendy but because it gives women exactly what they actually need: a room, a game, a reason to stay, and a conversation that happens on its own without any pressure. She also talks about growing up across three countries, what it felt like to land in American high school at thirteen with a New Zealand accent and no friends, and how the girl who coped by keeping her world small ended up building one of the fastest growing community businesses in Orange County. The detail that ties everything together: she was once the new person in a room full of strangers who all knew each other. She never forgot what that felt like. Now she makes sure nobody leaves her tables feeling that way. 🎙️ Meet Bridget | Season 6, Episode 164

What to Do When Something Feels Off — Teen Mental Health with Christina King, LMFT

"We Were Complete Strangers. Now We're Best Friends Running a Company Together." -Jewel Zimmer & Taylor Lamb of Juna

Two women. One supplement company. Zero plan to become best friends. Jewel Zimmer and Taylor Lamb co-founded Juna out of a simple frustration: neither of them could find what they actually needed. Jewel healed her postpartum experience through amino acids after conventional approaches left her without answers. Taylor spent three years with terrible gut health, acne, and depression before she did her own research and discovered that plants were the thing nobody had thought to suggest. When they met through mutual contacts in the marketing world, the connection was obvious. The company followed. In this conversation, Jewel and Taylor talk about the science and philosophy behind Juna, what it actually means to build from the root cause up rather than chasing symptoms, and why they believe plants carry something synthetics simply cannot. They also go back. Jewel grew up in a small mountain town in British Columbia that never felt like hers, moved to Europe at thirteen when her parents sold the house on a whim, and moved out on her own at sixteen because she needed out. She found her way to culinary school, then to some of the best kitchens in the world, then to cannabis, then to Juna. Taylor was diagnosed with ADHD in school, rebelled her way through high school in all the ways that look bad on a report card and excellent in retrospect, built her graphic design and brand skills one gig at a time, and became one of the most respected brand builders in the women's wellness space. The doctor who diagnosed Taylor told her parents not to worry. Most CEOs have this, he said. She'll be fine. He was right. 🎙️ Meet Bridget | Season 6, Episode 162

"Jump and Build the Parachute on the Way Down" - Jacquelyn Umof, Founder of Barre Definition

Content note: This episode includes brief discussion of a history of amenorrhea and a stress fracture connected to undereating during the guest's teenage ballet years. It is discussed as a resolved part of her past. If this is something you are navigating, support is available through the National Alliance for Eating Disorders helpline. Jacquelyn Umof trained as a professional ballet dancer before a fractured tibia at seventeen ended that chapter of her life. Her mom signed her up for a Pilates class to get her out of the house. She got certified at seventeen, walked into a USC gym with zero teaching experience, and asked for a job anyway. That is basically how she has done everything since. In this conversation, Jacquelyn talks about building Bar Definition from a beach camera and thirty videos into a real business, the years of bootstrapping before she would let herself spend real money on ads, and the moment her now-husband convinced her to make one good ad instead of a post every single day. She talks about collecting certifications not because she needed all of them, but because she didn't have a fitness degree and wanted to feel sure of what she was teaching. She also goes deep into motherhood: a genuinely painful pregnancy connected to hypermobility, a three hour home birth she calls the hardest and best thing she has ever done, and the recalibration of her relationship with her body and her time that came after. She talks honestly about the pressure to look a certain way after having a baby, and her decision to prioritize breastfeeding over getting her body back faster. And she goes back to seventeen year old Jacquelyn: quiet, introverted, more comfortable expressing herself through movement than words, competing only with herself, never her sister. The tibia fracture that looked like an ending turned out to be the beginning of everything she has built since. 🎙️ Meet Bridget | Season 6, Episode 161 Resources: National Alliance for Eating Disorders helpline

The Choiceful Timing of Vulnerability — A BFF Conversation with Asha & Keshiia

No guest this week. Just us. We have been thinking a lot about the difference between vulnerability as connection and vulnerability as performance. About what it means to go through something hard in an era when everyone has a camera and a comment section and the cultural message is that sharing equals healing. We do not think that is always true. In this episode, Asha and Keshiia talk about what it actually looks like to process something hard without putting it on display. The value of cocooning. The small group of two or three people who get access to the raw version. The difference between being honest that you are going through something and live-streaming the middle of it. The way oversharing while you are still in it can actually slow the processing down, not speed it up. We are both going through things right now that we are not naming here. That is intentional. It is also the whole point. For anyone who is in something hard and feels the pressure to perform it publicly before they have processed it privately — this one is for you. 🎙️ Meet Bridget | Season 6, Episode [#1160]