Claim OwnershipHow To Not Lose Your Sh!t
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© 2026 How To Not Lose Your Sh!t
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Want to know how you can make a difference without losing your sh!t?
Join Katie Paris and LaFonda Cousin, two moms with very different backgrounds who together run Red Wine & Blue – an organization of over half a million diverse suburban women working together to defeat extremism. Katie, the org’s founder, has worked in political organizing for most of her career. LaFonda, the Chief People Officer, is a wellness expert on a mission to reimagine self-care.
Each week, LaFonda and Katie talk to experts and everyday women who are getting involved, building community, and feeling better in the process.
265 Episodes
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Americans are at a breaking point. But that breaking point looks wildly different depending on who you ask. For many of us who have been protesting and organizing against the Trump Administration since 2016, we’re at an emotional breaking point. How much suffering, how many innocent lives have to be lost, before this country turns back toward democracy? For some who supported Trump (or at least didn’t care one way or the other), it’s a moral breaking point. Confronted with clear video evidenc...
On the one-year anniversary of Trump’s inauguration, we are exhausted and anxious. That’s why we’re turning to our favorite historian Heather Cox Richardson to help us reflect on the year and how we can and must continue to stand strong together. This conversation is not just about naming what’s gone wrong; it is also about recognizing what’s beginning to shift. Heather shared why the tide may be turning as cracks form in the MAGA movement and more people are rejecting extremism in fav...
This week on the pod, we interviewed two moms in Chicago who were arrested last year for protesting outside of an ICE facility. Nikki and Sarah said that they wanted to draw attention to what’s happening in this country by using their privilege as white suburban moms — moms not so different from Renee Good in Minneapolis. Not everyone has to go out and get arrested to stand up for immigrants in their community. There are so many ways to get involved, from helping your school with a food drive...
Last night, Red Wine & Blue held a virtual event we called Moms for Good where our community got together to process and grieve for Renee Good, who was killed in Minneapolis last week by a member of ICE. We talked about how it’s okay to feel all the feelings – sadness, fear, anger, overwhelm – but we also talked about how fear is being used to silence us. As moms, neighbors, and friends, we have to stay in the fight. Tomorrow on the pod, we’ll be joined by two suburban moms in...
Red Wine & Blue is back from the holidays and ready to tackle 2026! So it feels right that we were joined for our first pod of the new year by two of our favorite RWB colleagues, Rebecca and Janice. All last year, Rebecca did the hard work of tracking Project 2025 as Trump put it into place, one dangerous policy at a time. So of course we had to ask what her strategy has been to do this depressing research every day without losing her shit! She told us that the antidote has been seeing th...
Last week, Red Wine & Blue held our last live virtual event of the year. First, Katie Paris shared some of the wins we saw in 2025 elections and how we're approaching 2026. Then we're joined by our favorite political strategist and event guest, Jess McIntosh, to share some tips and tricks for navigating holiday parties. What should you do if a MAGA relative corners you and insists on a debate? What actually moves the needle, and what's a waste of your energy? Thanks so much for joining us...
Back in 2020, members of the violent group The Proud Boys jumped a fence and defaced the Black Lives Matter sign at Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church. They filmed themselves destroying the sign while chanting racial epithets. Metropolitan AME wasn’t the only Black church in D.C. to be attacked that night, but their response to the violence was unique. They sued the Proud Boys for damages, and when the group failed to pay, the church won the rights to their trademark. Now, they’r...
We were so lucky this week to be joined by Prentis Hemphill: a therapist, teacher, political organizer, and bestselling author of What It Takes to Heal. So often we hear women say that things feel deeply wrong right now and they want to do something about it. But how do we engage without losing ourselves? It can feel like pain is the only way to make change, like we can only heal the world if we’re willing to be exhausted and broken ourselves along the way. Prentis offers a differe...
In 2018, Jessica Yellin founded News Not Noise. She’d spent 17 years working in TV news (including as CNN’s Chief White House correspondent) and through those years, she learned that traditional news media is really good at generating anxiety and ratings. What it isn’t so good at is helping people understand what’s really going on (at least, not without a daily panic attack). What we really needed was… well, the news without the noise. Meanwhile, around that same time, Katie Paris was seeing...
This week is Thanksgiving, so we're celebrating gratitude with the RWB fam. We heard from our colleagues about what they're grateful for this year -- from brave kids walking out over ICE to the work we get to do every day to the joys of a good book. That's not to say that we're not also pissed off! Trump's latest misogynistic jibe (calling a female reporter "piggy") has Katie and LaFonda fuming. But the response we're seeing online from other women and the ways that our communities are ...
As an introvert and first-generation immigrant who moved to her city right before Covid, Lily didn’t know many of her neighbors. But this year, she was inspired to help deliver meals for a local food bank. Once she started hearing the stories of the families she was helping, she says her heart was touched and she was motivated to do more. She organized a group of volunteers to help even more families in need, meeting so many “like-minded and like-hearted people” in the process. “It’s really a...
Extremism lost big in Pennsylvania last week, from ICE-loving sheriffs to the State Supreme Court to school boards across the commonwealth. And it didn’t happen because of pundits on cable news or DC-based strategists. It happened because regular Pennsylvanians stepped up, ran for office, and talked to their neighbors and friends about what was on the line. This week on the pod, we’re joined by Sherry Luce, our PA Program Director, and Stacy Kunkel, our PA Deputy Program Director. They shared...
By now, you’ve probably heard that Democrats won big across the country last night. From Governor and Lt. Governor in Virginia to Proposition 50 in California to school boards and city councils across the country, the people made their voices heard. And some of the biggest swings, especially in Virginia, were amongst suburban women. This win goes far beyond the races that were on the ballot last night. This is a win for every American who wants to preserve democracy, common sense, and decency...
Last Wednesday, Red Wine & Blue was joined by Heather Cox Richardson for a virtual rally that celebrated America. After all, MAGA doesn’t own patriotism or the flag — and the No Kings protests last month were anything but “hate America rallies.” Exercising our First Amendment rights and protecting democracy against authoritarianism is as patriotic as it gets! We wanted to build on that momentum to get us through election day, so we held our own Love America Rally last Wednesday night. And...
This week on the pod, we were joined by a Virginia mom named Andrea. For years, she thought she hated politics — she says it just seemed like a reason for “people to be mean to each other.” But as last year’s election drew closer, she noticed that her friends and family weren’t talking about it. Everyone said they were too exhausted after the first Trump presidency. Andrea understood the feeling (who isn’t exhausted by Trump??), but she couldn’t stand by and do nothing. So she started a Troub...
This week on the pod, we were so excited to talk to Karen Walrond. She’s the author of books like The Lightmaker’s Manifesto, Radiant Rebellion, and In Defense of Dabbling. Her words about the importance of kindness, self-compassion, activism, and even anger were exactly what we needed to hear coming out of this past weekend of joyful protests. Our mission here is to help women make a difference in their communities without losing their shit, and the subtitle of The Lightmaker’s Manifes...
Katie Paris met Jennifer at the gym. It’s a gym of mostly women, where encouragement and high-fives are the norm and pull-ups are celebrated alongside wins for reproductive rights. But neither woman could have predicted that their gym friendship would lead to Jennifer co-creating a TroubleNation group called Hope In The Heights that now has more than 400 members! And still, Jennifer considers herself “humanitarian” rather than “political.” She says it’s just about doing the right thing ...
This week on the pod, we are so excited to share wisdom from the one and only Stacey Abrams. The legendary organizer (and author and entrepreneur and state representative and candidate for governor and Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan…) joined Red Wine & Blue last week for a virtual event. She was so inspiring that we just had to share her words with our podcast listeners too. Katie and Stacey discussed the 10 Steps to Authoritarianism (spoiler: we’ve hit them all) but more importantly, they...
We are so excited today to share the first episode of our new podcast How To Not Lose Your Sh!t. We’ve been hearing from women in our community that they want to get involved and make a difference, but they’re overwhelmed. They’re scared. And we hear you — we feel the same way so much of the time. But we have a theory: what if self-care and politics aren’t actually opposites? What if connecting with our neighbors and making real positive change can make us feel even better than a bubble...
Let’s be honest: this year has been a bit of a dumpster fire. Here at Red Wine & Blue, we’ve been hearing women in our community say they’re not sure how to make a difference — at least, not without totally losing their shit. So we decided to tackle that question head-on with a brand-new podcast. It’s simply called How To Not Lose Your Sh!t and it’s hosted by our very own Katie Paris and LaFonda Cousin. Katie, our founder, has worked in political organizing for most of her career. LaFonda...
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Rose was considered ethnic? huh
excellent justification for having a matriarchal society.