For the Season One finale of Inner Lives, Mariana turns the questions she’s spent the season asking other women on herself. She reflects on growing up between countries and cultures, becoming exceptionally good at adapting, and how achievement became a compass while asking What do I actually want? became much harder. From leaving a successful career in finance to entrepreneurship, motherhood, and eventually creating Inner Lives, Mariana explores the parts of herself she learned to put away—and what happened when she began listening to them again. A solo conversation about identity, ambition, motherhood, belonging, creativity, courage, and the tension between wanting a bigger life and a simpler one. Season 2 begins November 3. Guest submissions are open through October 13. Guest Submission Form - https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSf-GI6_jy9mELAjmWD0VtaFIcvEY1EwUrggyAH_5XrbJkyUWg/viewform?usp=dialog

Join Mariana for a conversation with Ruthie Ackerman, author of The Mother’s Code. Long before Ruthie became a mother, she had already learned how to take care of other people. Growing up with a mother struggling with mental illness and a brother with complex medical needs, she became a caretaker early—and learned to mold herself into the person other people needed her to be. That pattern followed her into adulthood, love, marriage, and eventually the question of whether she wanted to become a mother herself. In this conversation, Ruthie reflects on waiting to be chosen in relationships, becoming the “easygoing” woman who didn’t need too much, leaving a loving marriage for an uncertain future, freezing her eggs, infertility and donor conception, and finally discovering a version of motherhood that didn't require giving herself away. At 49, she is also confronting a larger question: after spending so much of our lives becoming who we think we're supposed to be, how do we learn to hear ourselves again? We talk about caregiving, freedom, feminism, fertility, motherhood, control, grief, creativity, identity, and the tension between being rewarded for pretending and wanting desperately to be known for who we really are. INNER LIVES PODCAST ✍🏻 Read the essays on Substack: https://marianacrestani.substack.com ▶ Watch on YouTube: @InnerLivesPodcast 📸 Follow on Instagram: @innerlivespod 🌐 Website: https://www.innerlivespodcast.com MARIANA 📸 Instagram: @marianaccrestani 🌐 Website: https://www.marianacrestani.com RUTHIE 📸 Instagram: @ruackerman 🌐 Website: www.ruthieackerman.com Episode 12 — Chapters 00:00 “I Realized I Was Kind of Faking It” 00:41 The Final Interview of Season One 03:25 Ruthie’s Earliest Picture of Motherhood 07:17 Becoming a Caregiver Before Becoming a Mother 14:29 Growing Up Too Soon 16:19 Searching for Freedom 19:30 “Do I Actually Want What Everyone Else Wants?” 25:24 Waiting to Be Chosen 28:03 Becoming the “Pick Me Girl” 36:35 Why Motherhood Felt Suffocating 39:11 Freezing Her Eggs—and Freezing the Decision 41:58 “He Was a Good Man. Why Would I Leave?” 48:12 When the Plan Fell Apart 58:43 Discovering “Outlaw Motherhood” 1:04:29 What She’d Tell Her Younger Self 1:08:41 What Ruthie’s Story Left Me Thinking About

Join Mariana for a conversation with Meghan Krempetz. As a little girl, Meghan was imaginative, playful, and always creating worlds of her own. Then adulthood brought responsibility, motherhood, loneliness, divorce, and the slow realization that somewhere along the way, she wasn’t entirely sure who she was anymore. Now, approaching 57, Meghan has built a life that feels deeply her own—filled with friendship, creativity, meaningful work, grown children who genuinely want to be around her, and a sense that there is still so much left to discover. In this conversation, we explore motherhood and the loss of independence, becoming capable too young, loneliness inside marriage, divorce, friendship and community, finding yourself again through work, aging without trying to recreate a younger version of yourself, and what it means to hold on to the parts of you that were always really yours. INNER LIVES PODCAST ✍🏻 Substack: https://substack.com/@marianaccrestani 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/innerlivespod/ 🌐 https://www.innerlivespodcast.com MARIANA CRESTANI 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marianaccrestani/ 🌐 https://www.marianacrestani.com MEGHAN KREMPETZ Director, Little Mountain Preschool

Join Mariana for a conversation with Keltie Maguire about one of the biggest decisions a woman can make: whether or not to become a mother. For most of her life, Keltie assumed she would eventually have children. Growing up, she couldn't think of a single woman in her life who had chosen otherwise. But as she got older, she found herself waiting for the certainty everyone told her would eventually come—and it never did. What followed was a long process of questioning what she actually wanted, what she believed she was supposed to want, and why not wanting motherhood made her feel broken, different, and less feminine. Keltie and Mariana talk about fear, uncertainty, marriage, freedom, meaning, the life Keltie ultimately chose, and what happens when we give ourselves permission to question the paths we've inherited. Because underneath the question of whether or not to have children is something much bigger: How do we know which desires are actually ours? INNER LIVES PODCAST ✍🏻 Read the essays on Substack: https://marianacrestani.substack.com ▶ Watch on YouTube: @InnerLivesPodcast 📸 Follow on Instagram: @innerlivespod 🌐 Website: https://www.innerlivespodcast.com MARIANA 📸 Instagram: @marianaccrestani 🌐 Website: https://www.marianacrestani.com KELTIE 📸 Instagram: @kidsorchildfree 🌐 Website: www.kidsorchildfree.com

Join Mariana for a conversation with Juliana, a former brand strategist and U.S. diplomat who became a model and wellness creator in her 50s. For much of her life, Juliana was always moving toward the next experience: living around the world, changing careers, raising children, and building the life she wanted. Then, in her late 40s, something changed. On paper, her life had finally come together. Inside her body, it felt like everything was beginning to fall apart. In this conversation, we explore beauty and ambition, the beliefs women inherit about getting older, what happens when a body that once did everything you asked of it begins asking something different of you, and why Juliana refuses to believe that a woman's best years have to be behind her. INNER LIVES PODCAST ✍🏻 Read the essays on Substack: https://marianacrestani.substack.com ▶ Watch on YouTube: @InnerLivesPodcast 📸 Follow on Instagram: @innerlivespod 🌐 Website: https://www.innerlivespodcast.com MARIANA 📸 Instagram: @marianaccrestani 🌐 Website: https://www.marianacrestani.com JULIANA 📸 Instagram: @silverhighligts1971 🌐 Website: www.silverhighlights1971.com