a podcast, sort of, about the mess

Turns out life doesn't come with a packing list.

We're all just winging it with the wrong luggage.

YouTube Soon Spotify Soon Apple Podcasts Soon

the show

The bikini was never the point.

This is Don't Pack Your Bikini — real conversations with women who have the receipts for lives and careers that didn't always go according to plan.

It's messier. Harder. Funnier. And honestly? So much more interesting than anything you could have packed for. We sit down with friends of ours, and strangers who become friends, for the stories, the wisdom, and the humor to prove it.

No filter. No pretending it was graceful. Just years of friendship, and everything in between.

So grab a glass of wine and your comfiest pajamas — because here's what we do know: the bikini was never the point.

who we are

Five roommates, one Disney apartment, and thirty years of not letting go.

We met during the Disney College Program in the early '90s — five 20-somethings crammed into company housing, working parades by day and figuring out our lives by night.

We haven't lived in the same state since. Careers changed direction, marriages happened (and sometimes un-happened), kids grew up, plans fell apart and got rebuilt. Somehow the friendship never did.

Don't Pack Your Bikini is us, thirty-plus years later, talking to each other and to women whose lives went sideways from the plan — with the kind of honesty you only get with people who've known you since before you knew yourself.

wherever you'll get your shows

We're taping now!

Once we hit 20 episodes recorded, we start dropping them — subscribe wherever you'll be listening, and you'll be the first to know when we go live.

YouTube Soon

Full video episodes Channel launching soon

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Stream the audio Show launching soon

Apple Podcasts Soon

Subscribe on Apple Show launching soon

think you'd fit right in?

Tell us the story that didn't go as planned.

Career pivot, unretirement, unexpected everything — if your life took a detour, we want to hear about it.

"You don't need a perfect story, or a polished one. Just a real one."

"Life is messy — we'll edit it to make sense for the audience later. Come as you are."

Got it — thank you! We'll be in touch soon. In the meantime, go press play on an episode. 🎧

how it all started

Where the name actually came from.

In the mid-'90s, Jennifer was expecting her first child and had a business trip on the calendar she wasn't able to make. She asked Amber, a valued teammate, to go in her place. Amber had never been on a business trip before, and she was thrilled.

Jennifer walked her through what to expect: a breakfast meeting, meetings all day, a dinner meeting that night, then catching up on missed work into the late hours — before flying home the next morning for more meetings. So, she told her: "Don't pack your bikini."

Fast forward several decades. An Instagram post showed a consultant's life in miniature — walk into the hotel room, bounce on the bed, pop back up, head right back out the door. Jennifer saw it and left one comment: "Don't Pack Your Bikini." Over 3,000 likes and comments later, she called Polly and said, "I think we've got something."

Many decades of laughing at corporate lexicon, building things from scratch (yes — we're really just making it up as we go), and watching life come together and fall apart later, Don't Pack Your Bikini is what we've learned: somewhere around midlife, life is no vacation.