
Advertise on podcast: The Third Thing
Rating
5from
This podcast has
23 episodes
Language
EnglishExplicit
No
Date created
2026/06/06
Latest episode
2026/10/29
Average duration
41 min.
Release period
7 days
Description
A podcast Hosted by Michelle & Danyelle: a coach and a therapist, an interracial and queer best friend pair of 26 years. The Third Thing is where we are naming and confronting the topics that challenge us in platonic relationships. On friendship and race, money, sobriety, politics, when we drift or breakup, and the jealousy nobody admits to. Each week we spill the tea from our hurdles, and offer up the tools we’ve learned along the way.
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S2E22: Astrology & Friendship Compatibility (pt 2): Generational Placements
2026/10/29
Somewhere between your late 20s and early 30s, life shook like a snow globe. Maybe you packed up and moved. Maybe you planted roots and doubled down. Astrology has a name for that season, and it turns out your best friend was probably going through it too.
In Part 2 of our astrology episode, Danyelle and Michelle go beyond the Big Six into the placements you share with your whole generation. We get into Chiron, the wounded healer, and why so many millennials are wired to want to be heard (and why we’re all in therapy about it). Then we lay our Saturn returns over our friendship: one of us blew everything up, the other dug in, and it explains a lot about the years we drifted. We close with app recommendations, a friendship date idea, and a two-card Pull for eclipse season.
**Correction: In the episode, Danyelle describes Chrion as a meteor. Chiron is a centaur, a small icy body between Saturn and Uranus. it was discovered in 1977 and called n asteroid, and is now classified as both a minor planet and a comet.
In This Episode
Chiron in Gemini: the shared core wound for anyone born 1983 to 1988Gen X’s Chiron in Taurus and the inherited pressure of security and stabilityWhy millennials are so into therapy, self-help, and growthReturns 101: your solar return (your birthday) and the infamous Saturn returnBlow it up or dig in: how your Saturn return shapes your friendshipsAstrology apps we love, and how to get your chart without a birth timeThe Pull: King of Cups reversed and the Eight of Cups for eclipse seasonReflection Questions
Thinking back to your late 20s and early 30s, did you blow things up or dig in? What about your closest friends?Where did your friendships have more space during that season, and what did that distance hold?Do you relate to the need to be heard? How does it show up in your friendships?Is there something you feel like you “should” know about a friend by now? What would it take to just ask?When everything around you feels unsteady, what’s your tether?Resources Mentioned
Astrology apps: The Pattern, Time Passages, CHANI, Co-Star, and The SanctuaryTherapy, tarot, and astrology readings with Danyelle at tidehealings.comTry This With Your Friend
Download an astrology app together, pull up both your charts, and turn it into a friendship date. What’s hilarious? What’s surprising? What finally makes sense?
Connect With Us
📸 Instagram: @thethirdthingpod
🌐 Website: TheThirdThingPod.com
🎧 Join our Patreon community for monthly events, deeper conversations, early access, workbooks, and more.
Support the show
S2E21: Astrology & Friendship Compatibility (pt 1): Reading Your Natal Chart
2026/10/22
Ever wonder why you and your best friend are perfectly in sync in person, but somehow every text thread turns into a small fire? There might be a cosmic reason.
In Part 1 of our astrology episode, Danyelle (therapist, tarot reader, resident witch) walks Michelle through the natal chart as a tool for friendship. This isn’t a 101, officially. It’s the two of us pulling out our charts, breaking down the Big Six, and getting honest about where our placements make us a dream team and where they make us butt heads. Astrology won’t excuse bad behavior or replace therapy, but it can give you one more piece of the puzzle, and a lot more grace for the people you love.
In This Episode
What a natal chart is, and why your birth time and place matterOur first brushes with astrologyThe four elements as a shortcut: what happens when air meets fire, or water meets earthThe Big Three (sun, rising, moon), through Danyelle’s Sag/Gemini/Cancer and Michelle’s Aries/Capricorn/AriesWhen your friend’s friends turn out to be a fun house mirror of youVenus, Mars, and Mercury (makes up the big six): the planets of love and values, conflict and action, and communicationGrace as a newer arrival after a quarter century of friendshipReflection Questions
Which elements show up most in your chart and in your closest friend’s? How do they work together?Is there a friend whose communication style always seems to clash with yours? What would shift if you assumed you were speaking different languages rather than coming at each other?Are you resonating more with your sun, moon, or rising right now?Where could a little more grace live in your friendships?Resources Mentioned
Ghost of a Podcast with Jessica LanyadooCo-Star, The Pattern, and Time Passages appsPart 2 drops next week: generational placements, what bubbled up for us, and The Pull.
Connect With Us
📸 Instagram: @thethirdthingpod
🌐 Website: TheThirdThingPod.com
🎧 Join our Patreon community for monthly events, deeper conversations, early access, workbooks, and more.
Support the show
S2E20: Weddings Make People Weird - Navigating Traditions, Money, & Drama
2026/10/15
You got the invite to be in the wedding party, and you said yes before you knew what you were signing up for: the matching robes, the bachelorette weekend, the speech, and a group chat with people you’ve never met who all love the bride as much as you do. Or you didn’t get asked to be maid of honor, and you’re finding a way to smile through it.
Weddings are love days. They are also full of drama. In this episode, Michelle and Danyelle look back on their years as maids of honor, bridesmaids, and guests, and ask why these milestones bring out our insecurities. The answer comes back to the work we’ve done all season: knowing what’s really yours to carry, holding your boundaries, and letting the day be about love instead of ranking your friendship.
In This Episode
Danyelle’s year of seven weddings, including walking her brother down the aisleBeing maid of honor at a venue in Moab that was nowhere near readyThe 26-person joint bachelorette in New Orleans, and the conflict behind the scenesDanyelle shares how it felt not to be named maid of honor, nine years laterMichelle’s first time as maid of honor, and what happens when money and class shape the plansWhy declining a bridesmaid invite can be honest and kind (but still hard)Why you should name a maid of honor or give everyone a clear jobThe Pull: Queen of Cups, on holding all of the emotions without becoming themReflection Questions
When have you felt ranked by a friend’s wedding, and what story did you tell yourself about it?What do you really have to give as part of a wedding party? Money, time, or energy? Where might you set clear expectations about what your limitations are? If you’re the one getting married, how can you make sure everyone knows they matter to you, even if they aren’t in the bridal party?What might change if you let go of how the day “should” go?Connect With Us
📸 Instagram: @thethirdthingpod
🌐 Website: TheThirdThingPod.com
🎧 Join our Patreon community for monthly events, deeper conversations, early access, workbooks, and more.
If this episode resonated with you, share it with a friend and leave a rating or review. It helps more people find the show and join the conversation about friendship, growth, and what it means to show up for each other across difference.
Support the show
S2E19: It's Not If, It's When: Mental Health in Friendship
2026/10/08
Your friend cancels again. They go quiet for a week. Or you're the one who has to text "I can't make it today" for the third time this month. Mental health is already living in your friendships, whether anyone has named it or not.
This week, Danyelle leads a conversation about what happens when we stop trying to fix each other and start learning to sit with it. We talk about the "pick yourself up by your bootstraps" mindset, why the urge to give advice is often about our own comfort, and how saying "it's not if, it's when" changed the way we show up for each other as friends and co-founders. Michelle also shares about a dear friend who died from an ED, and what it means to love someone through an illness you can't fix.
In This Episode
Why one in five people living with a mental health condition means it's in every friendshipDanyelle on living with ADHD and chronic illness, and asking for graceHow "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" and 9-to-5 culture shape what we expect from our bodiesWhy fixing a friend is often about making ourselves feel safeWhen two neurospicy brains don't mix, and how to name itAnxious attachment and taking someone's struggle personallyGrief that holds anger, sadness, and love at onceWhy listening beats advice about 19 times out of 20The Pull: Ace of PentaclesReflection Questions
Where might the thing that's annoying you about someone be an invitation to get curious about what's going on for them?When you're struggling, what do you need most from your friends: advice, company, or silence?Is there something you've been carrying alone that a friend could help you hold?Resources Mentioned
Tema Okun, "White Supremacy Culture" characteristicsadrienne maree brownIreland's Basic Income for the Arts pilotIf this episode brings something up: call or text 988 (Suicide & Crisis Lifeline), or contact the National Alliance for Eating Disorders helpline at (866) 662-1235Connect With Us
Instagram: @thethirdthingpod
Website, workbooks, and episode notes: www.thethirdthingpod.com
Join the community on Patreon: www.patreon.com/TheThirdThingPod
Support the show
S2E18: Can Men and Women Really Be Friends? Unpacking the Trope
2026/10/01
Can Men and Women Really Be Friends? The short answer is yes. The longer answer is where it gets interesting. When Harry Met Sally told a whole generation that "sex always gets in the way", and the friends-to-lovers pipeline has been reinforcing that idea ever since. So what happens to the real, full-body love you feel for a friend when the culture says that kind of intimacy only belongs to romance? Flip it between queer and hetero relationships or gender expressions, and suddenly a weekend away with your friend's partner looks very different.
This week Danyelle and Michelle go past the Mars-and-Venus version of this question and look at what's underneath it: where attraction lives in platonic love, why so many men are starved for touch and emotional connection, how race and body size shape who gets read as "safe" or "a threat," and how queerness opened up ways of loving each other that the usual scripts never allowed.
In This Episode
Why the real question isn't about gender but about how intimate is "too intimate"When Harry Met Sally, Seinfeld, and the media that taught us sex ruins friendshipWhere attraction lives in platonic love, and how you can nurture itThe therapist advice that stuck: not every need has to be met by your partnerRelationship anarchy and defining relationships as sexual or non-sexualWhy men are often under-touched and discouraged from naming emotional needsWho carries the labor of friendship in heteronormative householdsQueerplatonic love, a queerplatonic ex-wife, and why a bestie and a wife sharing an Airbnb every football season worksTarot pull: Ace of Swords reversed, on the fear of trying something new in how we communicateReflection Questions
Where are your boundaries around intimacy rooted in fear, and where could they be more expansive?Is there a need you've expected your partner to meet that a friend could help fill?Do you let yourself have a crush, a long hug, or held hands with someone you're not partnered with?What would it take to tell your partner, "I'm needing a kind of intimacy we don't have"?Resources Mentioned
Chanaye Kendall-Jackson, educator on polyamory, ethical non-monogamy and relationship anarchyOur Boundaries workbook, available at thethirdthingpod.comSupport the show
S2E17: What to Do When You Don't Like Your Friend's Partner
2026/09/24
Every relationship or friend group has had this moment: your favorite person is dating someone you can't stand. Maybe it's just a values mismatch, or maybe it's something heavier from controlling behavior to verbal abuse, or worse. Either way, the question is the same: what's actually your job here, and where's the line between being a good friend and trying to run someone else's relationship?
This week Danyelle and Michelle share the times they got this wrong, one who stayed quiet, one who rallied a full "intervention" campaign, and spoiler alert - neither ended up well. From there, they map out what actually helps: leading with curiosity instead of judgment, naming impact instead of verdicts, and knowing when "I don't love your partner" needs to become a real safety conversation.
In This Episode
Why "I don't click with your partner" usually isn't yours to fix or fully voiceThe therapist line, "They're the unit now", that uno-reversed Michelle's planLeading with impact on you ("I feel uncomfortable when...") instead of judgment of themWhy you're allowed to set limits on time together without trying to end the relationshipThe psychology of why we're drawn to familiar, sometimes unhealthy, relationship patternsHow to name concerning behavior without ultimatums or forcing a choiceSetting up a code word or safety check-inNational Domestic Violence Hotline: 1-800-799-7233, text START to 88788, or chat at thehotline.orgReflection Questions
Is my discomfort about their safety, or about my own values and preferences?Am I trying to help my friend, or trying to be right?Have I made it safe for my friend to come to me if things get worse?Where's a boundary I could set for myself instead of trying to change their relationship?Resources Mentioned
Our Boundaries workbook — available at thethirdthingpod.comNational Domestic Violence Hotline — 1-800-799-7233 / text START to 88788 / thehotline.orgConnect With Us
📸 Instagram: @thethirdthingpod
🌐 Website: TheThirdThingPod.com
🎧 Join our Patreon community for monthly events, deeper conversations, early access, workbooks, and more.
If this episode resonated with you, share it with a friend and leave a rating or review. It helps more people find the show and keeps the conversation about friendship, growth, and what it means to show up for each other going.
Support the show
S2E16: Are You a Good Friend to Yourself? On Self-Abandonment and People-Pleasing
2026/09/17
You already know how to show up for a friend: feed them a home cooked meal, celebrate their wins or birthdays, meet their tears with grace. Now flip it around and look at how you treat yourself when no one's watching.
This episode moves from the external work of friendship into the internal: what's actually happening in your nervous system when you people-please, fawn, or go quiet to keep the peace. Danyelle and Michelle break down people-pleasing as a form of self-abandonment, trace it back to IFS "parts" and protector instincts, and get honest about where they still do it from bridesmaid budgets to bracing for a partner walking through the door.
In This Episode
Why people-pleasing in friendship is often self-abandonment in disguiseIFS parts work: how protective parts formed to keep you safe, and why they can outlive their usefulnessFight, flight, freeze, and fawn: naming fawning as a nervous system response, not a personality traitReal stories: avoidance as a people-pleasing pattern, the maid-of-honor budget squeeze, and the "jolt off the couch" reflexChoosing a restaurant as a low-stakes place to practice saying what you actually wantThe pause-and-reframe tool for catching yourself mid-patternHow secure, "I got you" friendship still leaves room to say what isn't workingTarot pull: Knight of Wands — charging forward while staying in communication with yourselfReflection Questions
Where in your life does people-pleasing show up as avoidance rather than agreement?What's one relationship where you'd benefit from naming a feeling out loud instead of letting it build?If your best friend heard your internal dialogue about yourself, would they recognize it as kind?Where do you already have a boundary you haven't set yet?Resources Mentioned
"No Bad Parts" by Richard C. SchwartzTTT workbooks on attachment style, non-violent communication, and boundaries — available at thethirdthingpod.comConnect With Us
📸 Instagram: @thethirdthingpod
🌐 Website: TheThirdThingPod.com
🎧 Join our Patreon community for monthly events, deeper conversations, early access, workbooks, and more.
If this episode resonated with you, share it with a friend and leave a rating or review. It helps more people find the show and keeps the conversation about friendship, growth, and what it means to show up for each other going.
Support the show
S2E15: "I Give More Than I Get" - On One Sided Friendship
2026/09/10
Everybody has that friend who remembers the birthdays, plans the trips, sends the text first or the friendship where they're the one always reaching out (which one are you?). Naming that out loud feels uncomfortable no matter which side you're on. But what if the imbalance you're keeping score of isn't actually about being cared for less?
Michelle and Danyelle get into one-sided friendships and offer up a unique framework: over-functioning invites under-functioning, and neither role is good or bad. Rather, they're often trauma responses playing out in real time. Danyelle traces her under-functioning back to staying small and not taking up space; Michelle traces her over-functioning back to her mom's constant giving and a lifelong need to prove she's worthy of love. They connect this to attachment styles from Season 1, talk honestly about a friend who went quiet on Michelle for two months, and dig into capacity...how illness, parenthood, and life stage all shape what each person can actually show up with, and why that's not the same as how much they care. They close on delegation, love languages (and why Michelle can't stand that term), and a Tower-and-Sun pull about what has to fall apart before things get lighter.
In This Episode:
The framework: over-functioning invites under-functioning, and both are often nervous system responsesTracing over/under-functioning back to childhood and family patternsConnecting this to attachment styles — anxious and over-functioning, avoidant and under-functioningA real-time story: reaching out to a friend six times over two months with no response, and choosing not to take it personallyCapacity as a spectrum, and why it's not a measure of loveChronic illness, capacity, and living in a world that assumes able-bodiednessLearning to ask for what you need instead of resenting what isn't givenClosing tarot pull: The Tower and The SunReflection Questions:
Are you the over-functioner or the under-functioner in most of your friendships and does that shift depending on who you're with?Is there a friendship where you've been keeping score without saying so out loud?Where in your life is capacity, not love, the real limiting factor?Resources Mentioned:
Lena Dunham's Fame SickThe Third Thing workbooks: thethirdthingpod.comConnect With Us:
📍 Instagram: @thethirdthingpod
🌐 Website + workbooks: thethirdthingpod.com
💛 Join the community on Patreon
Support the show
S2E14: Why Making Friends as an Adult Feels So Hard (And What Actually Helps)
2026/09/03
You haven't had to walk into a room and introduce yourself in years, and then suddenly you do, and every old insecurity shows up at once. Making friends as an adult isn't just logistically harder than it was in middle school or college. It's a different game entirely, and most of us are playing it without ever being taught the rules.
In this episode, Michelle and Danyelle break from their usual format to turn the lens outward: why does adult friendship take so much more intention than the friendships we made growing up? They trace the structures that used to make connection automatic, school, dorms, shared schedules, and what happens once those structures disappear. Danyelle tells the full story of her friendship with Bex, from a "let's hang out" that almost got written off as small talk to a bond that's now a business partnership and chosen family. Michelle gets honest about seeing herself as the sidekick instead of the main character, and how that story quietly shaped who she let close. Together, they get into the parts of us that show up to protect us in new rooms, the real fear underneath rejection, and how to actually shift the narrative before you walk in.
In This Episode:
Why the structures that made childhood friendship easy don't exist in adulthoodDanyelle's story of meeting Bex and the moment she realized "let's hang out" was realThe "sidekick vs. main character" narrative and how it shapes who you let inParts work: understanding the protector parts that show up when you enter new roomsReframing the fear of rejection — and giving yourself permission to leaveClosing tarot pull: the Six of Pentacles, reversedReflection Questions:
What's the story you tell yourself walking into a room full of strangers?Where in your life are you still waiting for someone else to reach out first?Six of Pentacles, reversed, is about resistance to receiving — where might that show up for you in friendship?Resources Mentioned:
The Third Thing workbooks: thethirdthingpod.comConnect With Us:
📍 Instagram: @thethirdthingpod
🌐 Website + workbooks: thethirdthingpod.com
💛 Join the community on Patreon
Support the show
S2E13: Chosen Family 101 - What Queer Culture Gets Right About Friendship
2026/08/27
Season Two opens with the episode we've been wanting to make since day one. Queerness has been a thread running under every conversation on this show, and this time Michelle and Danyelle pull it into the center.
Danyelle grew up with two moms who fought on the front lines for marriage equality, and never had a coming out story of her own, queerness was just always an option. Michelle didn't have a close queer relationship until she met Danyelle, and spent longer finding her way there. Together they trace how queerness shaped their friendship, what it means to build a chosen family, and why queerness might be less about who you're attracted to and more about how you move through the world, your relationships, your rules, your sense of what's possible.
In this episode:
Danyelle's origin story: two moms, a politically active household, and growing up around the fight for marriage equalityThe Kinsey scale and what a peer sex-ed program taught them about the spectrum of sexualityMichelle's slower, more shame-shrouded relationship to her own sexuality growing upQueerness as culture, not just who you sleep withWhat it looked like to build a blended, chosen family across two moms and a dad living next doorThe 40% statistic: LGBTQ+ homeless youth, and why representation and chosen family matter so muchA Knight of Cups tarot pull to open the season, using The Crow Tarot deckReflection questions:
Who is in your chosen family, and how did that family get built?Where in your life have you felt like you had to create your own roadmap instead of following one that was already laid out for you?Resources mentioned:
Families We Choose by Kath Weston
It Gets Better Project: itgetsbetter.org
Connect with us:
📍 Instagram: @thethirdthingpod
🌐 Website + workbooks: thethirdthingpod.com
💛 Join the community on Patreon
Support the show
S1E12: Bonus Episode: Tarot Reading on Money, Scarcity, and Rest
2026/08/20
Ever wondered what actually happens in a tarot reading? Not the vague, Instagram-caption version, but a real one, with real questions, real doubt, and cards that don't let you off easy.
In this bonus episode, Danyelle gives Michelle a live reading using the Crow Tarot deck, right as Michelle is heading into a trip during a stretch of financial uncertainty. What comes up is the Five of Pentacles, King of Wands reversed, and the Hierophant, plus a Saturn retrograde transit landing directly on Michelle's natal moon. Together they work through the difference between real scarcity and inherited scarcity, why this moment is asking for stillness instead of action, and what it looks like to finally give an old protective part of yourself permission to rest.
In This Episode:
How the Crow became part of TTT loreSetting intentions for a reading: focusing on the question, not the outcome The pull: Five of Pentacles, King of Wands (reversed), the HierophantFive of Pentacles and reframing scarcity as a moment, not an identityKing of Wands reversed and why rest can be its own kind of unwaveringThe infinity symbol and tarot's take on cyclical lessonsThe Hierophant and questioning inherited beliefs about safetySaturn retrograde on the natal moon and what the next six months are askingReassigning the scarcity part a new job...Reflection Questions:
Where in your life are you focused on what's missing instead of what's already there?What old story about money or safety are you still carrying that no longer matches your reality?If your scarcity or fear had a new job, what would you want it to protect instead?Resources Mentioned:
Book a reading with Danyelle: hello @ thethirdthingpod.com
The Crow Tarot deck by MJ Cullinane
Support the show
S1E11: Bonus Episode: On Becoming Podcasters and Going Viral
2026/08/13
We finished Season 1. Ten episodes, recorded and released, exactly the way we said we would. In this bonus episode, we're pulling back the curtain on what that actually took to pull it off.
This isn't our typical episode, it's a real-time check-in between two best friends navigating what it means to build something new together. We talk about the shadow work that recording a podcast together has surfaced in our friendship, the wild ride of going viral (and what it was like to face that kind of attention together), the perfectionism and fear that come with being visible on social media for the first time, and what we've learned about taking care of each other in the middle of it all.
In This Episode:
What it's really been like recording Season 1 together as best friendsThe shadow work our friendship has surfaced through this processGoing viral: the numbers, the backlash, and how we got through itFacing perfectionism and fear around building a public platform from scratchWhat's coming in Season 2 — starting August 27Reflection Questions:
Where in your own friendships do you avoid the harder conversations by putting distance between you instead?What would it look like to let yourself be new at something, without needing to be great at it right away?Who in your life makes you feel safe enough to grow, even when it's uncomfortable?FYI:
Season 2 launches August 27Got a friendship story or dilemma? Send it to [email protected] With Us:
Follow along @thethirdthingpod on Instagram, and join us on Patreon for early access, community tarot readings, and more.
Support the show
S1E10: On Friendship and the Grief of Drifting
2026/08/06
You know that friend you keep meaning to text back? The one where you scroll up in the thread and realize it's been six months, then a year, then you've lost track? There was no fight or blowup, just the silence that crept in until one day you looked up and they weren't in your circle anymore. That's drifting.
This week, Michelle and Danyelle unpack the quiet ending nobody talks about: friendships that fade without a villain, a fight, or closure. They walk through the difference between structural drift (geography, life stages) and relational drift (just growing apart), and Michelle reads a real, unsent letter she wrote to a friend she's drifted from, a decade-plus friendship that dissolved into unanswered texts. They get into what it means to take accountability for your part in a drift without turning it into self-blame, and close out Season One with a two-card tarot pull on new beginnings and the foundation they've built together.
In This Episode
The difference between structural drift and relational driftWhy drifting can hurt more than a breakup because there's no closureDanyelle's story of a friendship that quietly faded over yearsMichelle reads the unsent letter she wrote to a drifted friendUsing letter-writing as a grief tool, and how to decide whether to send itTaking accountability for your part in a drift without self-blameA Season One wrap-up and a two-card pull: Page of Swords and Page of PentaclesResources
Sign up for our guides: The Letter You'll Never Send and A Guide to Your Cut & Clear Ceremony
Reflection Questions
Which of your friendships has quietly faded without a clear reason why?Have you ever grieved a friendship you never officially "lost"?What would it take to reach back out, or to finally let it go?Connect With Us
📸 Instagram: @thethirdthingpod
🌐 Website: TheThirdThingPod.com
🎧 Join our Patreon community for monthly events, deeper conversations, early access, workbooks, and more.
If this episode resonated with you, share it with a friend and leave a rating or review. It helps more people find the show and keeps the conversation going about friendship, growth, and what it means to show up for each other.
Support the show
S1E9: Money Differences in Friendship - When Your Incomes Don't Match
2026/07/30
You've never told your best friend what you actually make. Or you have, and you watched their face change. Money might be the last real taboo in friendship, more off-limits than sex, more off-limits than politics, and it's quietly shaping who feels safe going to who for what.
Michelle and Danyelle trace their own money stories back to childhood, growing up feeling scarcity in a wealthy area, absorbing very different lessons about what success and entrepreneurship meant, and carrying those wounds into 26 years of friendship. They get honest about the years their incomes have flip-flopped in both directions, the shame underneath "I can't afford that," and what it means to keep showing up for each other when one person can pay for dinner and the other can't.
In This Episode
Our first memories of money, scarcity, and what success looked like growing upWhy money is treated as more taboo than almost anything else in friendshipThe years our incomes flip-flopped, and what that brought upThe shame behind "I can't afford that" and learning to say it out loudRace, privilege, and who gets the runway to build wealthRedefining "value" in a friendship beyond who's picking up the checkThe Page of Cups tarot pull on curiosity and bringing lightness to hard conversationsResources
Sign up for all TTT workbooks and guides hereFeel-Good Finance by Aja Evans - Financial therapist, focuses on the psychology and mindset behind money habits, not just budgeting math.The Financial Diet by Chelsea Fagan - more mainstream but solid on the emotional-relationship-with-money angle, good crossover pick for a broader audience.Unicorn Millionaire Podcast - hosted by Charly Stoever (nonbinary Latinx money coach), explicitly for LGBTQ+, BIPOC, and first-gen folks. Frames wealth-building as identity and grief work, not just numbers. Very on-brand for your audience.SAGECents (via SAGE) - free financial literacy platform, originally built for LGBTQ+ elders but genuinely useful material on anyone navigating financial precarity later in life.Reflection Questions
Have you ever told a friend what you actually make?What would it take to have that conversation?Is there an imbalance in one of your friendships that's never been named out loud?Connect With Us
📸 Instagram: @thethirdthingpod
🌐 Website: TheThirdThingPod.com
🎧 Join our Patreon community for monthly events, deeper conversations, early access, workbooks, and more.
If this episode resonated with you, share it with a friend and leave a rating or review. It helps more people find the show and keeps the conversation going about friendship, growth, and what it means to show up for each other.
Support the show
S1E8: How to Stay Friends When Life Pulls You Apart
2026/07/23
📍 Content warning. This episode includes a discussion of a suicide attempt starting at 6:09 and running through 8:42. Please take care of yourself while listening. Skip ahead if you need to. If you or somebody you know is struggling, the 988 suicide and crisis line is available 24-7 by call or text.📍
You left the friend group chat on read for six months and it wasn't a fight, it was just life. School. A new city. A relationship. A marriage. A baby. If you've ever wondered whether going quiet on your best friend means the friendship is over, this episode is for you.
Michelle and Danyelle trace the full arc of their own friendship, from splitting up at 15 when Danyelle left their high school, through different cities, different relationships, and into marriage and parenthood, to make the case that drifting apart isn't a verdict on a friendship. It's what happens when two people are actually out there living. The real work isn't preventing the distance. It's choosing, deliberately, to find your way back.
In This Episode
Why leaving high school became the first of many life-stage divergencesMoving to different cities, and what it costs a friendship when proximity disappearsThe couch conversation where one of them finally said "I feel abandoned"How attachment styles and nonviolent communication changed how they show up for each other nowBecoming a "third parent" and what it means to rebuild closeness after marriage and kidsA two-card tarot pull (Knight of Swords and The Fool) on trust, journey, and taking the leapReflection Questions
Which of your friendships is in a quiet chapter right now?What life stage pulled you away from someone you love?What would it take to check in, and what's stopping you?Connect With Us
📸 Instagram: @thethirdthingpod
🌐 Website: TheThirdThingPod.com
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Podcast reviews
Read The Third Thing podcast reviews
beevee415 2026/10/15
real ode to friendship
I started listening to The Third Thing because Danyelle and Michelle have the kind of friendship you can feel through your headphones. What gets me is...
tbiale 2026/09/29
Such beautiful & honest conversations
Listening to this podcast is like spending time with a dear friend. Afterwards, I feel really filled up and in awe of the beauty in our connections. M...
ChartrucePNW 2026/09/24
Relatable w/ resources!
What a special find. Michelle and Danyelle bring such honesty, love and care to topics that anyone can find relatable. But what makes for that extra m...
Treffrey 2026/06/30
So connected!
I absolutely connected with Michelle and Danielle off the bat, in regard to, my very best friend/soulmate, who I met when I was also 14. And we have d...
JMar1288 2026/06/17
Wow! Must listen!
When I say that I ran to listen to these episodes, I literally ran, hopped into my
kayak while on vacation with my family, and sat on the lake and bin...
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