Episode 58
Food Aversions, Founder Friendship and Women’s Wellbeing with Dr. Sipra Laddha
Potatoes, cat tongues, and sandpaper skin—let’s talk food aversions, texture nightmares, and why maybe it’s totally fine to be a grown adult who can’t stand an apple.
This week on Different, not broken, I go fully public with a truth: I am not a picky eater. I am… let’s say, texture specific. I will sample almost anything—once. What happens afterward is between me, my gag reflex, and whatever unholy thing just brushed across my taste buds. Mashed potatoes? Yes. Potatoes in soup? Get them away from me. Tomato sauce? Great! Raw tomato? Why do you hate me? Apple slices? Hard pass. Apple juice? Sign me up. Oranges are a war zone, but orange juice is fine—just keep the strings (and the heartburn) far, far away.
Are these food preferences weird? Yes. Am I objectively a successful adult nonetheless? Also yes. Even if I can’t finish a plate of beans without gagging while my kids, in a spectacular twist of parental fate, will eat literally anything with stoic enthusiasm.
It’s not just about food, though. We blend the personal with the professional this episode. Our guest is the incomparable Speaker B, CEO of Luna Joy, mental health advocate, and my literal first phone call when I decided to build my practice. We tackle the idea of “competition” in women’s mental health spaces (spoiler: the real competition is the broken system, not each other) and how collaboration—not cutthroat tactics—moves everyone forward.
Thinking of launching your own thing but stuck on knowing whether venture capital and bootstrapping are just buzzwords for other people? We’ve lived both sides. Speaker B and I compare paths: raising millions in venture funding (which is about as glamorous as microwaving leftovers, more or less) versus scraping resources together and building from the ground up. Both are exhausting. Both are possible. Both come with landmines only those who have actually been in the room can describe.
Maybe you’ve never considered what it’s like to be the only woman—sometimes the only woman of color—pitching life-or-death solutions to a room full of people who need to check with their wives to know what postpartum depression is. Spoiler: you end up not only knowing you belong in those rooms, but also knowing you’ve got something the rest of the room literally cannot bring.
Still deciding if Different, not broken is your kind of podcast? If you’ve ever:
- Wondered why your sandwich can’t just be a sandwich—without some slimy tomato sabotaging it
- Needed to know how real women founders support each other through texts, resources, and mutual survival tactics instead of passive-aggressive LinkedIn shade
- Wanted to hear a vulnerable, unfiltered story about living through postpartum depression from someone who was clinically trained to help others (and still couldn’t get help herself)
- Needed a reason to feel absolutely valid in your own “weirdness,” whether that’s food, mood, or business battles
- Are looking for a show where softness is strength, and being different is a whole functional life, not a defect
Then hit play. If nothing else, you’ll leave feeling a little less alone in your quirks, and maybe with exactly the push you need to find your own sandbox—and fill it with the right people.
Plus, in Small Talk: a former Marine writes in about random, emotional tears in middle age. Why does softness sneak up on us, and what does it mean to finally drop the armor and just feel? Spoiler: it isn’t weakness.
Listen in. We save room for you—no tomatoes required.
Find out more about Sipra here: https://sipraladdhamd.com/
Transcript
Being licked by a cat is an objectively weird experience, especially if
Speaker:you're a dog person and you're used to, like, slobbery,
Speaker:jovial faces, and instead you're getting, like
Speaker:literal sandpaper being raked across your skin. Like, that's weird.
Speaker:And I think the idea that we're competing against each other is
Speaker:a very short sighted one. And I think the idea that we are competing against
Speaker:a huge problem that has been perpetuated for a lot of reasons for
Speaker:decades. That's really the competition. And we all kind of need to work together.
Speaker:All right, here we go. I'm gonna pretend I'm pushing record because that feels right.
Speaker:Okay, I'm pressing record. Boop. Hi,
Speaker:everybody. I'm Lauren Howard. Welcome to Different
Speaker:Not Broken, which is our podcast on exactly that.
Speaker:That there are a lot of people in this world walking around feeling broken. And
Speaker:the reality is you're just different. And that's fine.
Speaker:I want to be clear about something. I'm not a picky eater. I will try
Speaker:almost everything. I just probably hate most of
Speaker:it. But I will try it. And it's very rarely
Speaker:the taste, it is almost always the texture. And this means
Speaker:that there are things that I will eat in certain incarnations that I will not
Speaker:eat in other incarnations. It's like a whole thing.
Speaker:Potatoes. Okay. I love french fries. I
Speaker:love baked potatoes. I love mashed potatoes.
Speaker:But I cannot. Please hear me when I say cannot eat
Speaker:potatoes in soup. Or like whole potatoes
Speaker:roasted, that you are just supposed to eat as a
Speaker:potato. Can't. That's not.
Speaker:Nope. Can't do it. But you give me a mashed potato. Great.
Speaker:You give me a baked potato. Awesome. Caveat. Skins
Speaker:do not belong in mashed potatoes. They don't. That's just
Speaker:laziness. And I didn't ask you to make the mashed potatoes to begin with.
Speaker:You didn't have to make them that way for me. So I'm just saying
Speaker:skins don't belong. They're not better. The exception to that, however,
Speaker:is that I will eat potato skins. But that is probably
Speaker:because they are 94% cheese and bacon. And I can make
Speaker:arrangements around the rest of it because of
Speaker:the distribution of the cheese and bacon. I will eat the skin
Speaker:for the cheese and bacon. I would much rather a
Speaker:scooped out potato without the skin, but I will tolerate
Speaker:the skin because of the cheese and bacon distribution.
Speaker:Tomatoes. I cannot eat an uncooked tomato.
Speaker:Nope. You want to put a tomato on my sandwich? I reject that. Don't
Speaker:put tomatoes on my sandwich. You Want tomatoes in my salad? Nope. Hard.
Speaker:Nope. They don't belong there. Tomato sauce is fine.
Speaker:It's fine. It's not my favorite. Like, there are good tomato
Speaker:sauces. And I also think I like tomato sauce a lot more than I realize.
Speaker:I always think I don't like it, and then I eat it, and I'm like,
Speaker:oh, this is kind of good. I'm not against it. You could be like, will
Speaker:you eat this thing with red sauce? I'll be like, yeah, it's fine. Tomato sauce
Speaker:is fine. Tomatoes? Nope. Apples.
Speaker:And I don't know why. This is all, like, things that are supposed to be
Speaker:healthy for you. That probably tells you what really is the problem. There's
Speaker:nothing about an apple that should exist the way it exists. It just, like,
Speaker:it's so hard. It's hard to bite into. The texture
Speaker:is not okay. But I'll drink apple juice. I
Speaker:like apple juice. Go with that. I also don't want apples in
Speaker:anything. Like, I don't want apple pie. I don't
Speaker:want apple on my sandwich. Who does that? Seriously? Apples don't
Speaker:belong on sandwiches. But I'll drink apple juice. That's fine. I have no problem with
Speaker:the juice. Same thing with oranges. I really don't like oranges. I don't like
Speaker:watching people eat oranges. I'm just like. I just see all the strings, and I'm
Speaker:like, there's so many strings in your mouth. It just. It's not right. It's not
Speaker:right. My kids love oranges, and I give them their
Speaker:oranges because they're good for them. But I don't mind orange juice. I'll drink orange
Speaker:juice. I like the flavor, not the texture. Texture is the problem. Drink
Speaker:all the orange juice in the world, except for the fact that I'm now old
Speaker:and it gives me copious amounts of ingestion, and that is rude.
Speaker:But, yeah, I can't do oranges. Beans. No. No beans
Speaker:of any kind. Beans taste like a cat's tongue feels, and it
Speaker:makes me gag. I actually really like the flavor of beans. Like the
Speaker:taste, but the texture. No, no. If I wanted
Speaker:to eat a cat, I'd eat a cat. And I don't want to eat a
Speaker:cat. I don't want to be licked by a cat either. I don't like cats.
Speaker:That's not true. I like other people's cats. I quite like other people's cats. If
Speaker:you have a cat, I want to come over and hang out with your cat,
Speaker:but I don't want a cat in My house. I have no problem with your
Speaker:cat. Being licked by a cat is an objectively weird experience,
Speaker:especially if you're a dog person and you're used to like
Speaker:slobbery, jovial faces and instead
Speaker:you're getting like literal sandpaper being raked across your skin. Like, that's weird.
Speaker:And when you eat something and it has the same texture,
Speaker:that's not okay. That's not okay. Make beans
Speaker:less offensive. And I will eat them, but I can't. I just can't. I just
Speaker:can't. I can't eat beans. I try. My mother in law makes stuff sometimes
Speaker:and tries to hide the beans in like a puree. And like, good for her.
Speaker:And by the way, she does not have to do those things for my children
Speaker:at all. My children just eat the things they like. All the things.
Speaker:That's like the ultimate in either ironic parenting or
Speaker:like childhood rebellion. I don't know which one it is, but the fact that I
Speaker:got the children who eat everything without
Speaker:complaint, who, like my oldest, there's food she
Speaker:doesn't even like and she'll just eat it. She's like, it's fine, I don't really
Speaker:care. And I'm like, I have never once taken a bite of something
Speaker:that I objectively dislike and been like, it's
Speaker:fine, I'll finish it. No, that's not how my gag reflex
Speaker:works. No, absolutely not.
Speaker:Cannot possibly happen. And she's just like,
Speaker:it's fine, I can handle it. She doesn't like blueberries, she eats
Speaker:blueberries. She's like, I can tolerate them. I'm like,
Speaker:I can tolerate nothing. Coke, freestyle machines. That's not a
Speaker:texture thing. That's just an intestinal moral fortitude thing.
Speaker:Like, how dare you? How dare you give me
Speaker:my syrupy, sweet,
Speaker:carcinogenic drink and mix it with other
Speaker:people's syrupy, sweet, carcinogenic drinks. That is not
Speaker:what comes out of that machine, is not a Coca Cola. It is some
Speaker:modified version of Frankenstein soda that tastes
Speaker:like sweet armpit. No. And we've
Speaker:already talked about this before, but I can absolutely tell you
Speaker:where a beverage is from based on the taste alone, without
Speaker:looking at any other identifiers of it, because I have a
Speaker:beautiful mind and it's only for soft drink locations.
Speaker:I say all of this because I am without question
Speaker:a successful and fully functioning adult who
Speaker:pays my bills, who has sort of halfway raised
Speaker:two hecking good kids, who runs businesses,
Speaker:and who also might be bad at some of the, like, very
Speaker:fundamental parts of life. It is what it is so
Speaker:on that note, if anybody else has aversions that they want to share,
Speaker:I love hearing about them. I probably share them. There's a lot of them that
Speaker:people talk about that I'm like, oh yeah, no, I do that too. But also,
Speaker:if you have a tongue that is just like generally averse to everything that is
Speaker:not made for toddlers, I would like to hear from you because we do
Speaker:exist and we are grown ups and we can do good things
Speaker:in life while also being unable to
Speaker:tolerate eggs. Not eggs. I'm fine with eggs.
Speaker:Apples. Let's go with apples. That's also weird, right? I like all types of
Speaker:eggs. All types of eggs. I have no aversions to any types of eggs. People
Speaker:have very strong aversions to eggs. I will eat them in any form. But keep
Speaker:your apples away from me. Those are not meant for human consumption. They're hard
Speaker:and Sandy Bleh. Our guest
Speaker:today is Sifulada and she's an incredibly
Speaker:important person to me. A lot of people don't know this, but when we
Speaker:decided to open up our practice,
Speaker:Sipra was literally my first phone call. That's important. Aside from
Speaker:the fact that she's just a good friend, it's important because
Speaker:technically our companies are competitive. We're in the same space. I don't believe
Speaker:in competition. We need more good people in our space, not less.
Speaker:But when you find the right people who you can operate
Speaker:in business around, your first phone call, when you decide to
Speaker:do something in that business is going to be to somebody else who is literally
Speaker:in your field, who's going to be a cheerleader for you even though
Speaker:you're playing in the same sandbox and it makes the sandbox better. Super excited to
Speaker:have Sipper here today. She is the CEO of Luna Joy, which is an incredible
Speaker:mental health platform specifically focused on women of all ages. What
Speaker:they have built there is spectacular. I'm so excited to talk to
Speaker:her today about a number of things, some of which will be
Speaker:business related and some of which will be just 2026 toxic hellscape
Speaker:related. So Sipra, thank you so much for being here. I'm
Speaker:a previous private practice owner, I've worked in the health system and
Speaker:Most recently in 2022 was co founder of
Speaker:Lunajoy Health where we were very focused on pregnancy and
Speaker:postpartum related mental health is where we started and we really expanded
Speaker:to women's mental health across the lifespan and this was
Speaker:at a time where women's health was basically a category and what
Speaker:we found there was what I knew all through my clinical practice that women need
Speaker:specialized solutions and we can't give big box solutions to
Speaker:everyone and expect for them to work. And so we have now expanded
Speaker:or in many states, treating thousands and thousands of women a month.
Speaker:And it's just been such a privilege and a joy and honor. And I want
Speaker:to actually just jump off of something that you said about calling someone in your
Speaker:sandbox first. I was very honored that I was the first person that you called
Speaker:when you decided to take on that endeavor. And I really like that analogy. I
Speaker:think that the women's health space, we all win through cooperation. And
Speaker:really in the mental health space, we all win through cooperation. I am
Speaker:friends with competitor CEOs. I've helped them actively, they've
Speaker:helped me actively. And I like the analogy of the sandbox because I've never been
Speaker:in a sandbox where I've seen the kids run out of sand. There's always
Speaker:more than enough sand. And I think the idea that we're
Speaker:competing against each other is a very short sighted one. I think the idea
Speaker:that we are competing against a huge problem that has been perpetuated for a lot
Speaker:of reasons for decades, that's really the competition. And we all
Speaker:kind of need to work together a hundred percent. The number of times that I've
Speaker:texted you and been like, hey, do you have a resource for? Or you've done
Speaker:the same and said, hey, what do you use for this type of whatever? And
Speaker:we just send it back and forth like, why would I keep something that could
Speaker:help your patients? They're your patients. Like, why would I not share
Speaker:that back with you? Why would I not help you make your programs better? I
Speaker:don't think we would have gotten to where we got without people like you
Speaker:and a handful of other people in this space. We just built together. We just
Speaker:built alongside each other, a rising tide. But when things went well,
Speaker:we shared the wealth. And when things were awful, we're texting back and forth
Speaker:going, how did you get through this problem? That's the only way that you survive
Speaker:in this landscape. And I think especially as women and as women who are
Speaker:so much less likely to just be able to turn around to our venture
Speaker:buddies and be like, we're short on cash. Can you float me
Speaker:a cool couple million? That was never an option. That was
Speaker:never going to be an option. It's very validating
Speaker:because you and I took very different paths, which is not a bad thing
Speaker:on either side. But we took very different paths to get to a Similar
Speaker:place you guys went in for venture funding. I know you guys went through a
Speaker:number of accelerators and things like that. And we just were a couple of
Speaker:people in a room with a small amount of startup capital going, this is it.
Speaker:This is all we got. We have no more. And it leads to the same
Speaker:road. And they're both hard. That's the other thing is they're both hard. There is
Speaker:not one way that is harder than the other. But even being
Speaker:a venture backed founder, which sounds so much more glamorous than being a
Speaker:bootstrapped elbow grease. I know, it's so glamorous. You can tell me about all the
Speaker:glamorous.
Speaker:Your version of venture funding and
Speaker:the Princeton dude bro next to you,
Speaker:his version of venture funding is very different. Even though you guys are
Speaker:still receiving funding. So that's one of the things I wanted to talk
Speaker:about. From just the perspective of us both building our
Speaker:businesses side by side and you had a little bit of a head start on
Speaker:us. What is it like to be one of the only women in
Speaker:the room, probably one of the only women of color in the room.
Speaker:And also being the woman of color in the room
Speaker:screaming about health disparities for women. Yeah. In front
Speaker:of panels full of probably mostly
Speaker:white dudes who probably don't realize that women don't get a lot of
Speaker:funding. And if they do, they think it's because women don't have good ideas
Speaker:or who had no idea that
Speaker:there could be a difference between women's mental health and men's mental health.
Speaker:I think one thing that has consistently come up is
Speaker:that we have received venture funding and I'm very grateful for
Speaker:the success in that area. And also it has been such an eye opening experience
Speaker:around how decisions get made, who's making the decisions
Speaker:and what venture is really optimizing for and
Speaker:things like that. But being the brown woman in the room, the woman that did
Speaker:not come from a business background until I founded this company and started. Aside
Speaker:from starting my own private practice, I was entirely clinical. I mean I was seeing
Speaker:patients and I was figuring out workflows and developing clinics
Speaker:and things like that. But I think what's been really eye opening is
Speaker:that while there's a lot of venture in health care, I actually think that
Speaker:healthcare and venture are very disconnected in terms of a lot of the people putting
Speaker:the dollars into healthcare venture don't
Speaker:know a ton about healthcare. The number of conversations I
Speaker:had that were just kind of explaining how basic insurance works, how coverage
Speaker:works, how these coverage decisions get made what the limitations are with
Speaker:coverage, how you scale coverage, how that goes from one state to
Speaker:15 states. A lot of my job very early on was
Speaker:literally just laying the groundwork and laying the education that
Speaker:was needed in order for people to be able to make decisions that whether or
Speaker:not they wanted to invest. And I think that was pretty unique because my
Speaker:expectation was that I was going to be coming into rooms with people who knew
Speaker:this space. And what I found out quickly is that I had seen the
Speaker:space from every angle. I'd operated the space from every angle, as an
Speaker:individual, solo founder, as a mom who had gone through
Speaker:the system, had four pregnancies, four
Speaker:babies, one miscarriage myself. It was just like that kind of
Speaker:knowledge, that kind of learning, sitting with women who've been through these
Speaker:situations, going through it myself. Like, that was not
Speaker:perspective that most VCs that I spoke with had. And
Speaker:so before we could even get to talking about investment, I had to
Speaker:paint a very clear picture and just buy people into the
Speaker:idea that this was even a problem to begin with. The other side of that,
Speaker:though, is in some ways it was really empowering. I think one thing
Speaker:that I'll be honest, that often gets in founder way is just. Just imposter
Speaker:syndrome and feeling like maybe you don't have the answer, maybe you're not going to
Speaker:be able to figure it out. Maybe you're not the right person in the right
Speaker:seat at the right time. And being in those rooms, it was actually
Speaker:so clear to me, whatever ideas I had, that maybe I didn't belong,
Speaker:that I not only belonged and there needed to be more people like me, and
Speaker:this was like a mission that needed to happen. And whatever
Speaker:pain I was going to go through was worth it because,
Speaker:yeah, you get a lot of confidence when you're sitting with people who don't know
Speaker:the space, who don't know that women's health is a problem. People who, when you
Speaker:pitch to, say, oh, let me ask my wife about that. I've had six kids.
Speaker:And let me go talk to my wife and see what she thinks about this.
Speaker:It's incredibly empowering, actually, to sit there and say, like, hold on,
Speaker:no one else is coming. I'm it. I need to go figure out this problem,
Speaker:because this is what we're working with. Yeah, I had one of those experiences
Speaker:not that long ago. I was talking to somebody about insurance contracting, and he
Speaker:was trying to figure out how they could get confident contracts for their own business.
Speaker:And this is somebody who had a whole engine behind him, and he
Speaker:had Access to all sorts of funds and all of these things. And
Speaker:he said to me while we were talking contracting, he was like, okay, why don't
Speaker:you just tell the insurance companies they need to pay you more money? And I
Speaker:was like, amazing idea. Exactly. If you hadn't thought
Speaker:of that, I never would. Nobody has ever thought of that. You just
Speaker:fixed insurance. How did you. And so I was like, a lot of the contracts
Speaker:are rack rates, and they don't give you negotiation. And to get negotiation, you have
Speaker:to do certain things, and that takes years and blah, blah, blah. And he goes,
Speaker:okay, so if that doesn't work, then why don't you just collect from the insurance
Speaker:and then charge the patient the difference? Mostly because I don't want to go to
Speaker:jail. That's really the reason that I don't do it. But also
Speaker:because that's why they have insurance. That's not how it works.
Speaker:And he was like, floored. Absolutely
Speaker:floored that we could operate in this system. And it's one of
Speaker:those things where I say this all the time, Mental health is
Speaker:not profitable. You can keep the lights on with mental health. You can
Speaker:maybe make a little bit of money with mental health, but you're not going to
Speaker:get the hockey stick growth that most venture capitalists are looking for.
Speaker:You might get to a point where you've built a system so secure that you
Speaker:can sell it for a lot of money that represents everything that you've
Speaker:built and packaged up. You're not going to turn around and bill insurance and end
Speaker:up with all this extra money that you can go Scrooge
Speaker:McDuck through. That's not the thing. I get these. I call them Health Tech
Speaker:Bros. I get them on the consulting side all the time, where they're like,
Speaker:it feels like there's a simple solution to this. We should just charge more. One
Speaker:of the big frustrations is when they figure out that they can't charge more. They're
Speaker:like, okay, then we'll pay people less. And you're like, you're still breaking the
Speaker:system. You're still. You're still participating in the broken system. You're not fixing
Speaker:anything. But those are the types of questions I get all the time that you're
Speaker:right. I get them. And I'm like, oh, this is why I have a job.
Speaker:Because if there weren't people like me, you
Speaker:would be in jail. You might still end up in jail, but not for
Speaker:anything I had something to do with. I think it also translates into speed.
Speaker:We have a number of competitors who are doing a lot of the same things
Speaker:that we are who've been around twice as long as us, who have received
Speaker:2-3x more funding than we've received. And part of what the
Speaker:funding has bought them is time to iterate and pivot and try
Speaker:to find the right model and figure it out as they go along. And that
Speaker:kind of Runway to do that is very important. I think it's part of what
Speaker:venture capital can be useful for doing. But I think that this is also the
Speaker:difference when you have someone with lived experience, when you have someone who has been
Speaker:wedged in the healthcare system, literally working 80 plus hours during
Speaker:residency hours and hours learning all the different kinds of systems. Systems, because you have
Speaker:to operate within you kind of like know and see that there's
Speaker:one of two or three paths. And so you gotta go do one of
Speaker:two or three paths and figure out where you can be innovative, where there's room
Speaker:for innovation and where there's really not, no matter how we want it to be
Speaker:different and execute. And that was definitely very much the Luna Joy story. My
Speaker:co founder was also a psychiatrist, operated within the system,
Speaker:built telehealth clinics. And so when we got started, we
Speaker:were up and running and generating revenue within two and a half
Speaker:months and starting to show that growth. I think
Speaker:that's one place where venture capital can be really interesting and
Speaker:important. And the other though that I think is really important for us to look
Speaker:at is something that you said earlier about mental health alone not being a very
Speaker:profitable business. I think that this is really important to know because I think
Speaker:venture capital can be a power stick, right? It can
Speaker:help you just with scale and do all the things and that
Speaker:is really important. But sometimes it can also
Speaker:cause blinding of the facts that are in front of you. And I think that
Speaker:this has been one thing that my co founder and I had always been
Speaker:very focused on. I remember when we got our first check in YC's
Speaker:first 125k and we were like, wow. Because we had been
Speaker:bootstrapping. We'd literally been taking money from our savings account,
Speaker:right? Hard earned money from face to face time with patients.
Speaker:And I remember when we got that first check it was just that feeling.
Speaker:125k. Nothing is stopping us now. The world is kind
Speaker:of at our feet. And then 500 and then 2 million and then 3 million.
Speaker:And we had just always been so focused that despite whatever
Speaker:capital we're taking in, the way in which we're building and
Speaker:the things that we're building can never ignore the fact that
Speaker:mental health reimbursement, next to what you need to pay people is
Speaker:a low margin business. And so how do we make it personalized? How do we
Speaker:make it specialized? How do we make it more effective? How do we scale this
Speaker:faster? Those were all questions and those are definitely questions that we
Speaker:utilized capital for, but without ever losing sight
Speaker:of. This is not acquired customer at all costs and
Speaker:unit economics need to be right side up. Because what
Speaker:I've seen in mental health is that there's this kind of taking on venture
Speaker:funding and blitz scaling. And for people who blitz scale but lose
Speaker:sight of the fundamental unit economic issue and don't plan around
Speaker:it, there is this key thing in that happens
Speaker:of those companies, of their outcomes, their exits and things like that. And then
Speaker:we've certainly seen other companies that have taken on venture funding have really
Speaker:scaled and very quickly gotten a handle on the unit economics and figured out
Speaker:other ways to become sticky, other services to add on and have done well.
Speaker:But there is that fundamental factor in there. And I think sometimes
Speaker:when you have a lot of money in the bank, too much money in the
Speaker:bank, it is almost too easy to ignore some
Speaker:business basics. People always talk about don't be afraid to fail, try things.
Speaker:And I believe in that. Truly. I believe in that truly. I believe that you
Speaker:can recover from almost anything and you learn more from failure than you do from
Speaker:success. And I really do believe that. But we also don't talk a lot about
Speaker:the fact that successful failure, if we can term it that bouncing back
Speaker:from that usually has more to do with money. If you can fail six times
Speaker:and afford to fail six times, then there's no problem failing six times. Most people
Speaker:don't have that ability. You do get companies that you see pivot
Speaker:more or try things more or test the waters a little bit more because they
Speaker:have the money in the bank where it's not going to be catastrophic if
Speaker:this thing doesn't pay off, if this thing doesn't convert, we'll try something new.
Speaker:That's a function of money more than it is a function of innovation. You see
Speaker:this narrative around fearlessness, around people who can just quit their jobs
Speaker:and throw it all at something if you have the money to do. That's not
Speaker:fear, that's capital. That's not fearlessness, that's capital. That's different.
Speaker:Yeah, I think it does muddy the waters for people who like aren't in that
Speaker:position and don't understand how somebody could do that. You can only
Speaker:do it. If you can afford to do it. Yeah. So getting out of the
Speaker:business stuff a little bit, I wanted to talk a little bit about,
Speaker:yes, Luna Joy, but also mental health as a whole. You did
Speaker:not stumble into running Luna Joy
Speaker:on accident. Are you comfortable talking about your kind of lived experience around
Speaker:that and how you ended up there? Yeah, absolutely. And
Speaker:you know, it's interesting actually. For a long time I was not comfortable talking about
Speaker:it and I just went and started this company and it was my sublimated response
Speaker:to trauma and seeing how badly the system was. And
Speaker:as I've gotten further in my journey, I've just realized having these conversations
Speaker:is so much a part of what's going to ultimately change
Speaker:the field. But back 11 years ago, my twins are now 11.
Speaker:I was chief resident in residency, worked in
Speaker:the perinatal mental health clinic. And so I was really seeing this kind of
Speaker:firsthand, seeing these patients. I was learning the specialization. And then I was
Speaker:also pregnant with twins that year. So I was very pregnant. I had this high
Speaker:risk pregnancy. They were sharing placenta, developed a lot of anxiety
Speaker:and depression. And there was so much normalization in my head around
Speaker:this is what it feels like to be pregnant. High risk pregnancy. You're a resident,
Speaker:you're not sleeping. All these things are happening. And
Speaker:one thing that most medical doctors are really good at is just putting one foot
Speaker:in front of the other and getting through. So that was my whole
Speaker:speech to myself during pregnancy. Just get through it. And then I got through it.
Speaker:And in my mind, in the way that I thought about it, I was like,
Speaker:once I deliver the twins and if they're happy and healthy, my problems will all
Speaker:go away and I will feel better. I delivered my twins, they were healthy, they
Speaker:were a bit early. We had some special nursery NICU time, but they did very
Speaker:well. It was the best outcome we could have hoped for. But then what
Speaker:happened after that was like the darkest, most scary
Speaker:nine to 12 months of my life. Brought them home and the
Speaker:twins were happy. My husband was happy that we had these healthy babies. And
Speaker:I had really bad depression, really bad anxiety. I
Speaker:remember this vividly. I had a panic attack on Christmas
Speaker:Eve. We were at my in laws and I remember
Speaker:standing outside the twins door and I had this moment where I was like all
Speaker:the things were flying around in my head and I could feel my breathing getting
Speaker:shallow and I felt like the warmth creep up over me and I was having
Speaker:these two conflicting thoughts. One is, I hope they don't wake up because we just
Speaker:put them down And I cannot have the next three hours hours be two babies
Speaker:screaming. And then also, I hope they don't die and stop breathing. Right. Both
Speaker:of these things were simultaneously going through my brain. And I was
Speaker:just recognizing very medical. I'm like, wow, this is a lot of autonomic
Speaker:arousal. What's happening? And 15 minutes later, I was like, oh, my
Speaker:gosh, that was a panic attack. And despite having, again, all the resources, all the
Speaker:education, this is what I did for a living. I tweeted anxiety and depression.
Speaker:It dawned on me that the boys were five and a half months old. I
Speaker:was like, I have postpartum anxiety. This is wild.
Speaker:And people around me knew. My parents definitely knew. They're both physicians. They
Speaker:were coming in from out of town quite a bit. My cousins had checked
Speaker:in on me, like, I hope she's okay. I'm not sure if she's okay. My
Speaker:husband, a number of times like, what can I do? It just seems like you're
Speaker:off. And I just was not clued in at all. I was like, this is
Speaker:just what it must be. And what happened from there was also really interesting
Speaker:in that I tried to get help, and it was really hard to get help.
Speaker:All of the specialists were cash pay. I had these two babies
Speaker:in residency. You don't get paid very much in residency. Right. My husband was just
Speaker:finishing law school, just about to get a job, paying for diapers and
Speaker:daycare and all the things. I could not afford to see someone for a couple
Speaker:hundred dollars cash. And I saw one psychiatrist
Speaker:who was general, and she had never treated postpartum
Speaker:depression or anxiety. Saw a therapist who's a generalist, and
Speaker:she asked me what a fourth degree tear was. I had lots of birth trauma.
Speaker:And I was like, oh, gosh, I'm not in the mood to sit here and
Speaker:explain to someone what the medical event was. Just to get
Speaker:to, like, where I was psychologically. And that was pretty early on, but it really
Speaker:started turning my wheels around, how do we serve women?
Speaker:My OB was lovely. He got my voice here happy and healthy. But his
Speaker:response was like, just keep going. You're gonna be okay. It was like, pat on
Speaker:the shoulder, keep going. And I was like, this cannot be the way that we
Speaker:introduce women into motherhood, and this cannot be the way that we
Speaker:take care of people during literally the most vulnerable times in
Speaker:their life. And it is a very important time, even if you just put moms
Speaker:away, because by and large, we don't treat women or moms very well. And just
Speaker:think about those babies this is not a great start to
Speaker:their life. Right. There's lots of studies around how women who are affected with mood
Speaker:disorders during pregnancy, during postpartum, just from interactions
Speaker:with their babies. These things have lifelong implications. That was a bit of my
Speaker:story. I eventually did find the help that I need. My best friend as a
Speaker:psychiatrist. And after a couple of hooking me up with the right people,
Speaker:moved from this very dark place. But going through that experience
Speaker:was really eye opening. Certainly very different experiencing as a patient as
Speaker:opposed to just treating someone, which I had been very used to doing at that
Speaker:point. And so I went off and I built my private practice. I saw this
Speaker:patient population and after a number of years of running that just felt like I
Speaker:need to do more. I cannot just see the number of people that
Speaker:I see a day and have that be my impact in the world. My goal
Speaker:has always been to have massive impact. And I went to medical school not knowing
Speaker:that I want to be a psychiatrist. But the overall goal that I feel like
Speaker:I've known Since I was 4 or 5, I was a little bit of a
Speaker:precocious child, is I wanted to reduce suffering. And as I started to think about,
Speaker:like, how do I do that? I recognized it needed to be an in network
Speaker:solution. It needed to be integrated into the system. And so
Speaker:when we started Moona Joy, the picture was actually really clear.
Speaker:You know, my co founder and I were just both very aligned on this is
Speaker:a exactly what needs to be built. This is exactly where the pain points are.
Speaker:And there was certainly a little bit of iteration. But by and large, what we
Speaker:started off with our idea is 98%
Speaker:of what the company is doing now. It's been a really special
Speaker:journey. You've told me your story before and I think it's so powerful
Speaker:to hear it from somebody who was literally entrenched in this system
Speaker:and also not being served by the system. And that you
Speaker:somehow both fortunately and unfortunately had to learn it as a patient to
Speaker:really figure out how to build it as a clinician. I wish that hadn't happened
Speaker:for you. But also we ended up with what we have now because of it.
Speaker:What we have now is so important. What you've built is so important. But I
Speaker:had a different experience. I don't
Speaker:think I dealt with postpartum with either of my kids. I did have
Speaker:really bad panic attacks when I was pregnant that would go away as soon as
Speaker:I turned on a light. I would wake up in the middle of the night
Speaker:with panic attack, go in the bathroom, turn on the light gone, literally
Speaker:instantly gone. And my OB was like, huh, that's interesting.
Speaker:And I'm like, is it just gonna be interesting until I have this kid? And
Speaker:he was like, kind of. And then both of my kids were super al dente.
Speaker:I've never been pregnant for more than seven and a half months, so I don't
Speaker:know what that's like, but both times it happened. But also, my
Speaker:dad was a psychiatrist, and he was pretty sick. He
Speaker:died seven weeks after my oldest was born. They came to the hospital, and he
Speaker:got to hold her when she was in the nicu. She was six weeks early.
Speaker:And you see all these videos online of everybody came to see the baby, but
Speaker:he came to see his baby, meaning the mother. And that's basically my dad.
Speaker:And so he was sitting in the hospital room with me in his wheelchair, and
Speaker:we kind of had a way that we could sit in silence together. We didn't
Speaker:ever really need to be engaging. I was sitting there. I had just had a
Speaker:baby like, 18 hours before. I was exhausted, and he
Speaker:was old and dying, and so he was also exhausted. And he
Speaker:just sits up in his wheelchair and looks at me and goes, hey. Some
Speaker:women get a transient depression after they have a baby. If that happens, we'll deal
Speaker:with it. I knew all about it. It wasn't like I was uninformed about
Speaker:postpartum, but I just went, thanks, dad. And he was
Speaker:like, yep. But it was out there.
Speaker:He addressed it. It didn't need to be addressed. I didn't need a PowerPoint. I
Speaker:didn't need a pamphlet. It was just, if
Speaker:this happens, let me know. I don't think I ended up with postpartum. But what
Speaker:I did have was with my oldest, I did try to nurse, but
Speaker:she was in the nicu, and I could not produce milk
Speaker:to save my life. And after the first couple of days, I would
Speaker:get a very acute depression.
Speaker:I was pumping. That would go away as soon as I
Speaker:stopped. Yeah, it was so intense.
Speaker:And I thought I was doing the right thing for my kids. That was outside
Speaker:of everything else, because I had never had any intention
Speaker:to nurse. It was just not something that was super important to me. I
Speaker:just was fine with formula. But for some reason, once she was born, because she
Speaker:was premature, because I wanted to, I don't know. I decided that I was going
Speaker:to try to nurse her. I was going to try all these things, and it
Speaker:didn't work. And it was so intensely stressful that it
Speaker:wasn't working. And I went and talked to the lactation
Speaker:consultant. And I talked to my OB and I talked to everybody and everybody said,
Speaker:I don't think that's actually a thing. I just think you're probably stressed. It's tough
Speaker:when you don't make milk. A year or two later I found out that there
Speaker:actually is a nursing related dysthymia that nobody knew about.
Speaker:Like nobody had any familiarity with. And I was like, that's
Speaker:what I was dealing with. Yeah. And everybody dismissed it
Speaker:as basically, they were like, if it stops when you're done pumping, then just don't
Speaker:pump. And I was like, yeah, that doesn't feel like the answer. What you're talking
Speaker:about is, I think, actually a really big prevalent problem, which is that we
Speaker:are not educated in women's health. Even lactation
Speaker:consultants, OB GYN psychiatrists, like all these people that,
Speaker:myself included, that are supposed to be supportive to this population,
Speaker:actually have very little training in this. The reason that I knew a lot
Speaker:about reproductive psychiatry is a. I chose to take that rotation during
Speaker:residency. That was not a requirement. And so lots of people left residency never
Speaker:having dealt with a pregnant or postpartum woman. And then through my
Speaker:own journey, did a lot of my own, like, what is literature on this?
Speaker:I would like have a symptom and then I would go and read a PubMed
Speaker:article to see what was out there. And usually you do a PubMed search and
Speaker:27,000 things come up and you have to figure out what you want to read.
Speaker:And you do PubMed searches on things related to lactation
Speaker:or perimenopause. There's a not that much. And often it's like a study
Speaker:in Australia or like, you know, study somewhere else. And so not
Speaker:only is the information not necessarily
Speaker:readily more available until more recently, but the education has
Speaker:been there. I had no training in lactation
Speaker:at all, going through four years of medical school and four years of residency. Our
Speaker:OB colleagues, who I love very much and we work with very closely to get
Speaker:people into mental health care, they are struggling as well because there is
Speaker:only so much that one person can be responsible for. And they're responsible for the
Speaker:baby and the birth and the mom and all the things that can go wrong
Speaker:in that time period. They aren't nutritionists, they aren't
Speaker:lactation consultants, they don't know all of those things. I think
Speaker:menopause is a really good example of this. Obese are the women's health specialists
Speaker:and only recently are more and more obese actually learning
Speaker:about HRT because it was vilified for such a long time or people getting
Speaker:additional training in that. And so there is a huge knowledge
Speaker:gap in the system. And so that's why when I think about the VCs or
Speaker:the tech bros and it's like, okay, well, let me explain this to you. And
Speaker:also, the problem is not just there. It is in medicine. Medicine
Speaker:has not been designed for women. Our teaching is not around the differences
Speaker:and the unique needs and all that. It's just not the way
Speaker:that it's built. So that's deeply problematic. It's really hard to
Speaker:get information on pregnancy and
Speaker:women's health when you don't study women.
Speaker:And because what was it like 1994 when we said women had to be
Speaker:involved in medical studies? And you wonder why there's this huge
Speaker:dearth of information and why a lot of the research that we base
Speaker:some of our decisions on is like 400 years old. I wish
Speaker:that was an exaggeration. Who is the right person for your practice and
Speaker:where can they find you? People want to reach out to me. Practice aside, I'm
Speaker:always happy to lend a list of listening here. I probably spend an
Speaker:inordinate amount of time actually responding to LinkedIn messages from other
Speaker:female founders. I get that's not a great ROI on my time, but I
Speaker:just feel like part of the reason that I've gotten to the places that I
Speaker:do the same thing. Someone lent me their time, someone took me under
Speaker:their wing, someone agreed to have a conversation. And so if you want to get
Speaker:in touch with me, send me a message on LinkedIn if I don't respond, I'm
Speaker:not trying to be mean or ignore you. I really do want to talk with
Speaker:you. Just send me another message. Sometimes, like my kids usually like tug on my
Speaker:shoulder a couple of times and then I will respond. But in terms of mental
Speaker:health treatment, people can go to the website if they want treatment there. It's hello,
Speaker:Lunajoy.com can reach out to staff
Speaker:via the website via text message. Jane is a great
Speaker:contact. She's our COO at lunajoy as well for any bigger
Speaker:strategic partnerships and things like that. And she's Jane Yan. J
Speaker:A N E y a n@hello lunajoy.com we're
Speaker:fairly easy to find. Is there a patient population you specialize in
Speaker:now or is it women at every stage of the journey? So, you know, when
Speaker:I think about the Luna Joe population, it is predominantly pregnancy,
Speaker:postpartum, reproductive kind of journey. And then we
Speaker:have a large perimenopausal population. So those are the two focus
Speaker:areas. But really we see women across the lifespan and we don't
Speaker:not treat you if you're not a woman. By to 10% of our patients
Speaker:are men. And that's because I think people just tend to bring the
Speaker:people they love wherever they found trust and they found a good service. And so
Speaker:we do not turn people away based upon gender. But when we think about like
Speaker:the specialization of our clinicians, it is around those two areas.
Speaker:Sepra, thank you so much for coming and hanging out with me today. I love
Speaker:hearing your story. I also love our overlap, but
Speaker:in completely differing ways. And the fact that I
Speaker:think we need more relationships like this out
Speaker:in the founder community or just maybe like more visibility. I bet there's
Speaker:a lot that we don't even know about because to something that you said.
Speaker:Almost every time that I've asked for support from somebody I
Speaker:know or somebody I don't know in this community, they've almost
Speaker:always said yes, even if it's somebody that I just met. Especially being a first
Speaker:time founder. But being a founder is such a unique experience
Speaker:in that it's very much glorified, it's very much
Speaker:made to sound very pretty. But the reality is that
Speaker:99% of the minutes are super hard. And
Speaker:the only person who's going to understand that as well as you do is somebody
Speaker:else who has been in those trenches. And so having you in the last several
Speaker:years has been invaluable to my own mental health. Not just as a friend, not
Speaker:as a kiddosha. I think just highlighting these relationships, we need more of
Speaker:them. We need people, we need founders who are getting together with other founders.
Speaker:Not to talk strategy, not even though that will be
Speaker:part of it. Not to talk about scaling or
Speaker:building, but just to say, hey, your experience and my experience, even though we're in
Speaker:totally different fields, are so similar and you can do it. And here's
Speaker:why, or here's how I got through that, or here's how supporting somebody
Speaker:who does literally exactly what I do made my business better.
Speaker:Because that's by and large my experience. It was lovely having you.
Speaker:Everybody please go check out the Luna Joy website. Cipra is on LinkedIn. That's where
Speaker:I met her. So I'm lucky in that way too.
Speaker:And now we'll go to Allison who has this week's
Speaker:small talk. All right, so we have a small talk from
Speaker:Rodney in Texas. Something has shifted in me over the
Speaker:last two years and I cannot explain it. I am
Speaker:a 44 year old former Marine who Now tears up at and dog food
Speaker:commercials at the end of Pixar movies at my
Speaker:nephew's school play. I am not complaining. If
Speaker:anything, it feels like something opened up that used to be locked, but I don't
Speaker:have language for it yet, and I'm not sure what changed. My
Speaker:wife thinks it's beautiful. My brothers think it's hilarious.
Speaker:I mostly think it's confusing. Have you ever noticed
Speaker:a shift in yourself emotionally, not clinically, where
Speaker:something just softened? How do you make sense
Speaker:of it? I have absolutely noticed that in myself, especially as I get older
Speaker:and have, like, specific life experiences or get to parts of my life that I
Speaker:hadn't been to before. I've always been the type of person who would, like, take
Speaker:people in, but I didn't expect
Speaker:how abruptly that faucet would
Speaker:turn on after having kids as soon as I had my first
Speaker:kid. I mean, we're talking about, like, days in, like, not far enough in
Speaker:to even have any understanding of what parenthood actually is. And
Speaker:I wasn't particularly like this when I was pregnant. It's not like it was just
Speaker:like this emotional, hormonal thing. And it has never stopped.
Speaker:I remember after having my oldest, she was probably like a year or year and
Speaker:a half old, and we sat down and watched the Lion King. And there was
Speaker:a line very early in the movie that I've heard a thousand
Speaker:times. Lion King came out when I was in first grade. I've watched this movie.
Speaker:I know this movie from start to. To finish. And there was a line
Speaker:very early in the movie, and I'm just like. I just started, like,
Speaker:leaking from my eyes nonstop. I couldn't figure out
Speaker:why that line meant so much more to me today than it did
Speaker:10 years, 20 years before. And then I very quickly realized it
Speaker:was because I now had a small human. I would be leaving if this happened.
Speaker:And that was, like, completely impossible to understand.
Speaker:But even further back than that, my.
Speaker:My oldest was six weeks early. She was still in the
Speaker:nicu. And I had run over to my mom's house to check on my
Speaker:dad because my dad was very, very sick at the time. And while I was
Speaker:sitting at their kitchen table before going over to spend time with my
Speaker:daughter on the news, they had a story about a baby who had
Speaker:been found, like, left on a porch or something, and he
Speaker:was in bad shape, and he was only a couple of hours
Speaker:old when they found him. And it was some neighbor's apartment porch. Like,
Speaker:somebody just walked by, dropped this baby in love. And
Speaker:historically, I would have looked at that, I would have perceived
Speaker:that story and been like, wow, that's. That's awful. Like, I can't believe they would
Speaker:do that to a baby. And then they said that
Speaker:the baby was in the same NICU that my child was in. And I
Speaker:swear to God, I was, like, getting my keys. I got to go get a
Speaker:second baby. As far as I was concerned, that was perfectly
Speaker:reasonable. I'm gonna go get this is. There's a baby. I have one. I
Speaker:could have two. They're in the same place. Somebody didn't want it.
Speaker:I want it because I want all babies now. All babies are my babies now,
Speaker:and I'm just gonna go get this baby. And obviously, I. I knew that that
Speaker:wasn't realistic and that there was other things involved in it, but as far as
Speaker:I was concerned, like, I. I got room for one. I got room for
Speaker:two, and I will take them, and I will love them, and I will have
Speaker:them forever. And I
Speaker:feel like that baby ended up getting adopted by one of the nurses or something.
Speaker:Who was caring for him in the nicu. I don't know, but I just remember
Speaker:every time walking into the nicu, very intent on seeing my own daughter,
Speaker:obviously, but also, like, looking around like, you want to come home with me?
Speaker:I'll take you. You need a good home. I got a good home. Any babies.
Speaker:You want babies. Any babies need home, send them to my way. I got them.
Speaker:And that was, like, instant. I mean, my kid probably was less than a week
Speaker:old when I was like, when I. When it was just, yes, give me all
Speaker:the babies. I also.
Speaker:I'm now remembering, remember my dad being
Speaker:relatively stoic when I was growing up. He would
Speaker:share his affection. He would share stories he would tell you. When
Speaker:he was angry, he would tell you. And things made him sad. But
Speaker:it was never like, I'm sad, and I'm gonna sit and be sad. It was
Speaker:always like, well, shit happens, and move on. I had never seen
Speaker:him get overly emotional. And then when he was probably in his
Speaker:60s, he was still working at that point, he got
Speaker:this infection or something. I don't remember what. And it made him really
Speaker:sick. And after that, he cried all
Speaker:the time. And not like, I'm sad cry. Like, literally, I had
Speaker:never seen him crying before. And the first time I saw it, I thought he
Speaker:was choking because he couldn't speak, and
Speaker:it scared me. And then I figured out after,
Speaker:like, 15 or 20 seconds that he was just choked up. He just. And I.
Speaker:I didn't know what to do with it. I had never seen him before. And
Speaker:from that point on, for, I want to say the last 15 years of his
Speaker:life about. Just about.
Speaker:He was very, very emotional.
Speaker:He would cry at things. He would get emotional at things
Speaker:that I. I had never seen him get emotional at before. He had
Speaker:many wells that I had never seen before. And once we understood that, he
Speaker:just. It like, unlocked something in him about, I
Speaker:don't know, the preciousness of life or. Or how
Speaker:much he loved the people who showed up to take care of him or something,
Speaker:I don't know. After that, he just. He just
Speaker:was much, much more. He was
Speaker:capable of emoting in a way that he never had been before. He was also.
Speaker:He wasn't a Marine, but he was Navy attached to Marines. So, like, maybe that's
Speaker:like. Maybe that's like a progression of
Speaker:advanced military service masculinity or something. You, like, you hit
Speaker:an age and they're like, okay, you get your tears now. I don't know.
Speaker:That's a gross oversimplification. If it's troublesome,
Speaker:if it's a problem, I would go talk to somebody because there are a couple
Speaker:of neurological conditions that can cause that. You would
Speaker:see other stuff too. So it would be unlikely that that would be the only
Speaker:symptom. But, like, doesn't hurt to talk to somebody. But if it's just something
Speaker:that you're getting used to and you're not used to accessing this
Speaker:part of your emotional framework and you're just figuring out how to
Speaker:navigate it, and maybe that just takes time. Maybe it just
Speaker:takes time. But I think the men who can process
Speaker:what they're feeling inside, who do it openly, who do it in front
Speaker:of other men, are the key to solving
Speaker:so many of the masculinity issues we have, I'd say, in this country, but probably
Speaker:in this world. And there is. There is nothing
Speaker:biological that makes women more emotional than men.
Speaker:It's just the way we've been socialized to believe that it's
Speaker:okay for women to be more emotional than men, and it is okay for women
Speaker:to be emotional, but it's not an either or. Men experience
Speaker:trauma, they experience loss, they experience grief, they experience all of it.
Speaker:And being able to access that and process that is what keeps you
Speaker:safe and healthy. And the fact that we have spent so much time
Speaker:not allowing the men in our society to access those things and process
Speaker:those things because it was somehow common on their masculinity is
Speaker:bullshit. So if you found it, great. If it's
Speaker:interfering with things. If it's popping up at unusual times, like if you
Speaker:see a commercial for dog food where a dog
Speaker:gets a new home and you're happy for the dog and that makes
Speaker:you tear up, that's fine. That's totally
Speaker:normal. It might be something you're not used to, but it's
Speaker:not like there are people who are just like that. If you find
Speaker:yourself crying mid sentence from something that doesn't feel like
Speaker:it's accessing any emotional part of you, I would
Speaker:go talk to a professional. But other than
Speaker:that, enjoy the cry. It's cathartic, and you deserve it.
Speaker:Thanks for being here, guys. Have a good day. Love you. Meaning?
Speaker:I'm sure there are others. I know. Obviously there are others. There's like
Speaker:a whole list of rules.
