Trust is the hidden infrastructure underneath every relationship we have: at work, in our marriages, in our friendships, and with ourselves. In this episode of Mighty as a Mother, workplace trust expert and bestselling author Minda Harts walks us through her Seven Trust Languages framework and the real, hidden cost of broken trust for working mothers, including how to rebuild trust at work and at home, how to advocate for what you need, and why self-trust is where it all starts.

What if the thing quietly eroding your closest relationships isn't a trust problem at all, but a communication one?

That's the question Minda kept coming back to, and it reframed this entire conversation for us.

Minda Harts is the creator of the Seven Trust Languages and the author of Talk to Me Nice, The Memo, Right Within, and You Are More Than Magic. She's an adjunct professor at NYU's Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, the founder of The Memo LLC, and an award-winning filmmaker. LinkedIn named her its number one Top Voice in the Workplace, and Business Insider put her on its list of 100 People Transforming Business. She's helped teams at Nike, Google, Best Buy, and Zoom learn how to actually talk to one another.

We wanted her at our table because trust isn't just a boardroom strategy. It shows up in your Slack messages and your group texts, in the way you ask for help and the way you don't. Minda spent years as "the only" in the room, having panic attacks she couldn't name, before she found the language she was missing. That search became the seven trust languages, and in this episode we widen the lens all the way from the office to the whole of a woman's life.

Together we talk candidly about:

• Why trust rarely breaks in one big act of betrayal, and how it actually erodes in the small, quiet moments we sweep under the rug
• The seven trust languages, and how to identify your primary, secondary, and tertiary
• The stories we invent when we don't have the full picture ("my manager must hate me"), and how one honest conversation can dismantle them
• How to ask your boss for what you need without torching the relationship
• Why "clear is kind," and how your tone can change everything even when the words are identical
• Bringing the trust languages home: keeping your word with your kids, your partner, and your closest friends
• The generational trust gap at work, and why boomers and Gen Z experience the same workplace so differently
• What to do when you don't feel safe enough to even start the conversation
• The single question every leader, partner, and friend should be asking: "What do you need from me?"
• How to rebuild trust once it's fractured, and why demonstration always beats a quick apology

You'll leave this one with language for things you've been feeling but couldn't name, and one small, doable thing you can do today to start repairing a relationship that matters to you.

Links & resources

• Talk to Me Nice: The Seven Trust Languages for a Better Workplace by Minda Harts
• The Memo: What Women of Color Need to Know to Secure a Seat at the Table by Minda Harts
• Minda's website: mindaharts.com
• Minda on Instagram: @mindaharts
• Minda on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/mindaharts

When was the last time you let yourself fantasize about a different kind of life?

Not a vacation. Not a long weekend. But a real, full-bodied reimagining of your days — one where your kids meet you. Where you meet yourself. Where the pace of life finally matches the pace of your heartbeat.

Elodie Ferchaud did more than fantasize. She built it.

Elodie is the Co-Founder and Chief Revenue Officer of Boundless Life — a global community that gives families the tools, the structure, and the community to live, work, and learn across some of the most beautiful destinations on earth. After 15 years building brands at L'Oréal and Procter & Gamble, living what looked like a successful international life, Elodie took a sabbatical that changed everything. What started as a deeply personal decision to slow down became a movement. Today, Boundless has welcomed more than 5,000 participants from over 50 countries across 8 destinations worldwide — Sintra, Portugal; Syros, Greece; Tuscany, Italy; Sanur, Bali; Kotor, Montenegro; Estepona, Spain; La Barra, Uruguay; and Kamakura, Japan.

What makes Elodie's story so resonant for ambitious mothers isn't the travel. It's the truth underneath it: that the model of success we've been handed often doesn't fit the life we actually want. And that the hardest part of changing isn't logistics — it's letting go of external validation long enough to trust your gut.

A French mother of four, raised by educators, Elodie co-founded Boundless Life alongside Mauro Repacci and Rekha Magon after first joining as a participating family herself. She knows this life from the inside out — the fear, the freedom, and everything in between.

Together we talk candidly about:

• What life looked like before Boundless — the commutes, the missed school concerts, the feeling of being in the wheel with no exit

• Why she took a sabbatical that terrified her, and what she discovered on the other side

• The Gallup data showing that roughly 40% of American women ages 15 to 44 want to leave the US permanently — nearly double the rate of all US adults

• What slow travel actually feels like on the ground: walkable cities, spontaneous mornings, bumping into neighbors you know in the middle of Greece

• The Boundless program structure — from 3-week summer programs to 3-month academic cohorts to full 9-month stays

• Why kids don't need more toys — they need community and unstructured space to discover the world

• The mother who, at the end of her Tuscany cohort, said for the first time: "My kids got to meet their mother"

• How sibling bonds deepen through shared adventure and shared hardship

• The internal and external resistance Elodie faced — including her own father, a lifelong educator, who still struggles to accept the path she chose

• What she would tell any woman who feels trapped by the pace of her life but can't see a clear exit

What you'll walk away with:

Permission. Not the kind anyone else can give you — the kind that comes from hearing a woman who built something real say: you can always come back. The grind will wait. The life you're dreaming of? It won't.

Links & Resources:

• Boundless Life website: boundless.life

• Boundless Life on Instagram: @boundlesslife

• Boundless Life on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/boundlesslife

• Elodie Ferchaud on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/elodieferchaud

• Explore Boundless Life 4-Week Summer Programs: boundless.life/4-week-getaway

MAAM Links:

• Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/mighty-as-a-mother/id1687678053

• Read more at Substack: https://mightyasamother.substack.com

• Shop our favorites: https://shopmy.us/shop/mightyasamotherpodcast

In this episode of Mighty as a Mother, we sit down with Shasta Nelson — friendship researcher, bestselling author, and one of the leading experts on adult female friendship and loneliness — to talk about why so many women feel disconnected even in their fullest lives, and what it actually takes to build the kind of close female friendships that sustain us.

There's a kind of loneliness that doesn't look the way we picture it. It's not the woman alone in a dark apartment. It's the one running carpool, answering emails, texting a dozen people, and still going to bed feeling unseen. It's the mom surrounded by her kids, her colleagues, her neighborhood — and somehow starving for real connection.

If that sounds familiar, this episode is for you.

For more than 15 years, Shasta Nelson has studied how adults form and maintain friendships — what makes closeness thrive and why so many women feel deeply disconnected even in their fullest lives. She is the author of three acclaimed books on female friendship, a two-time TEDx speaker, and the former Chief Friendship Officer of the US Chamber of Connections. Her work blends research with lived experience, making the science of female friendship feel not just meaningful — but urgent.

In this conversation, we explore why women's loneliness is so misunderstood, what close friendships actually require, and how to build the kind of relationships that carry us through every season — especially the hard ones.

• Why up to 60% of people report feeling lonely regularly — and why the loneliest women are often the most socially connected

• What loneliness actually is (it's a biological signal, not a personal failing — and the shame around it is making the female friendship crisis worse)

• The 200-hour friendship rule: why it takes 200 hours to build a best friendship as an adult — and what to do with that number

• Shasta's Frientimacy Triangle — the three requirements every healthy female friendship needs: Positivity, Consistency, and Vulnerability

• How to diagnose which element of deep female friendship is missing in your closest relationships right now

• Why most adult friendships die when the "container" changes (the job, the school, the neighborhood) — and how to prevent it

• How to ask for more from a friendship — more honesty, support, or reciprocity — without making it awkward

• What modeling female friendship in front of your kids actually does for them — and why most of us are doing it in hiding

Shasta Nelson is one of the leading experts on female friendship and adult loneliness. She is the author of Frientimacy: How to Deepen Friendships for Lifelong Health and Happiness, Friendships Don't Just Happen, and The Business of Friendship, and has spoken at TEDx, corporations, and women's organizations worldwide. She is the former Chief Friendship Officer of the US Chamber of Connections and the founder of GirlFriendCircles.com — one of the first friendship-matching platforms for adult women.

• Shasta Nelson's website: www.shastanelson.com

• Shasta on Instagram: @shastanelson

• Shasta on LinkedIn: Shasta Nelson

• Books by Shasta Nelson:

• • Frientimacy: How to Deepen Friendships for Lifelong Health and Happiness

  • Friendships Don't Just Happen

  • The Business of Friendship

• Previous MAAM episode on female friendship: Anna Goldfarb on friendship

For more research-informed conversations on female friendship, motherhood, ambition, and wellness, subscribe to Mighty as a Mother: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Substack