Episode 41 of What’s Your Damage? brings a first for the show: AJ and AJ welcome their editor, KT, as their very first guest. Together, the three of them unpack abandonment — being left, leaving others, and the ways we sometimes abandon ourselves.

KT kicks things off by tracing the roots of her codependency back to high school, when a complicated relationship with a close friend and make-out buddy ended in a painful rupture. After a mental health crisis involving her friend, KT found herself suddenly ostracized not only by that person, but by their family as well. It became her first real rock-bottom moment and helped establish a pattern of trying to rescue the people she loved.

That pattern showed up again in a seven-and-a-half-year relationship. KT rushed into building a life with her partner — moving in quickly, getting pets together, and becoming deeply invested in helping him through difficult periods. As the relationship became increasingly strained and alcohol became a major problem, KT found some escape through another relationship within their polyamorous dynamic.

But after the original relationship ended, the person who had become her refuge fell in love with someone else and moved away, triggering KT’s deepest fear of abandonment. Strangely, it also became the beginning of something new. With distance, time, and an unexpected assist from the show Couples Therapy, KT began learning how to stop rescuing everyone around her and start healing herself.

J approaches abandonment from a different direction: the grief of realizing that relationships can change even when nobody has done anything wrong. After moving to a new city with her husband, she found herself listening again and again to The Head and the Heart’s “Rivers and Roads,” a song about distance from the people who once felt closest to you.

When her parents also moved away, the hometown “hub” she had always expected to return to disappeared. During one visit, she and her husband realized that none of the doors they had imagined opening for them actually did — there were no invitations to stay, no plans being made, and no easy return to the life they had left behind. After a year of trying to maintain those relationships exactly as they had been, J finally let herself grieve on the drive home and accept that they needed to build roots where they were now.

A closes things out by talking about a different kind of abandonment: abandoning herself.

During her years in New York, she allowed the culture surrounding UCB to shake her sense of who she was. She tried to become the kind of performer and person she believed the theater wanted her to be, pouring her time, talent, energy, and identity into an institution she hoped would validate her.

Then she was cut.

Instead of fighting her way back in, she made the decision never to return. Around that time, HAIM’s album Days Are Gone — and especially its title track — became part of the process of letting go. The theater she had given so much to was gone from her life, but in leaving it behind, she began finding herself again.

This week, it’s abandonment from every direction: the people who leave us, the lives we outgrow, the relationships we can’t rescue, and the moment we realize that sometimes the person we most need to stop abandoning is ourselves.

AJ and AJ are middle-aged now, which means it’s time to look back at who used to be in charge: their parents.

“J“ remembers blasting Billy Joel with her dad and how quickly a fun moment could shift when his need for control took over. One Sunday, a harmless evening of cards, singing, and good clean Mormon fun turned into “J” and her brother quietly managing their dad’s mood — something she now recognizes as fawning and children being asked to emotionally caretake for an adult.

“A” reflects on control from the other side now that she’s raising Little "A". How do you guide your kid, build good habits, and keep them safe while still preparing to eventually let them go?

She also revisits being called “Cinderella” growing up, when keeping the house clean often felt tied to keeping her mother happy. Now Little “A” is obsessed with Cinderella — but instead of seeing A as the girl scrubbing the floors, she sees her mom as the princess.

This week, AJ and AJ talk parental control, fawning, emotional caretaking, and trying not to pass the same patterns down.

Episode 39: AJ and AJ begin this episode with a trigger warning as they explore experiences of violation, entitlement, and the anger that comes from realizing someone else believed they had a right to you.

“J” starts with her time performing in The Homecoming by Harold Pinter, where she played the only woman in the cast—a character who, quite literally, gets passed around the men in the family. After the production ended, “J” discovered that one of her castmates had secretly developed feelings for her. Two years later, when she met the man who would become her husband, that former castmate became angry with both of them because, in his mind, “J” should have given him a chance. “J” talks about the rage of realizing that someone she considered a friend felt entitled to her body, her attention, and her heart—and how clearly she could see the patriarchy at work in that entitlement.

“A” takes us back to her college years, when she had a huge crush on a baseball player. One night, while out at a bar with friends, “A” was drugged. Thankfully, her friends recognized something was wrong, got her home, and kept her safe. Later, when she saw the baseball player, instead of showing concern, he laughed and called her “drunky.” “A” talks about the anger, humiliation, and sense of violation that followed—and how she turned to Nelly Furtado’s music to reconnect with her own power.

This week, AJ and AJ talk about the many forms violation can take, the entitlement that so often sits underneath it, and what it means to reclaim yourself after someone makes you feel like your body, feelings, or choices belong to them.

Episode 38 is all about dreams evolving—what happens when the life you once wanted stops fitting, and how letting go of an old definition of success can make room for something more meaningful.

“J” takes us back to 2011, when she moved away from her hometown, her husband, and her entire community for a new hospital job in a new city. She worked overnights and took the train back to visit her husband, assuming the move would be temporary: get some experience, build her career, and eventually return home. For the first time, theater wasn’t the center of her life. She started running, became deeply attached to Florence + the Machine’s Lungs, and discovered how relieving it could feel to focus on stability and professional success instead of constantly chasing a life in theater. And surprisingly? She didn’t miss it as much as she expected. Eventually performance found its way back to her through improv—but by then, the dream looked completely different.

“A” talks about the evolution of a very different dream: being on SNL and becoming famous. After repeatedly feeling shut out of opportunities, she moved to New Orleans and started working on film and television sets, convinced that getting closer to the industry would eventually lead to her breakthrough. While working as a stand-in on a TV show, she thought this might finally be her moment—only to watch someone from catering get bumped up while she walked away with no big break and some fresh trauma from getting screamed at by the DP.

Being surrounded by famous people also started to change what "A" wanted. She saw people with enormous platforms who seemed to stand for nothing, while the work that actually made her feel connected was producing social-justice children’s theater in libraries, hospitals, and community gardens. Remembering Barack Obama’s message that if you want to create change, you should work in your community, her dream slowly shifted away from Hollywood recognition and toward building something with real people.

There was still plenty of glamour, of course: driving around New Orleans in her Jeep with the windows down, listening to the Elvis 30 #1 Hits double CD and feeling extremely bohemian.

Sometimes giving up on a dream isn’t failure. Sometimes the dream did exactly what it was supposed to do: it got you moving until you discovered what you actually wanted.

AJ and AJ kick off this episode with a content warning: child abuse is discussed.

This week’s damage is hypocrisy, specifically, the strange rules parents create for their kids while somehow finding themselves exempt from those same rules.

“A” starts with Mommie Dearest and the infamous “no wire hangers” scene, which hit a little too close to home. Watching the movie helped her recognize just how abusive some of her own childhood experiences were—especially since her dad used to jokingly call her mom “Mommie Dearest.” The joke gets a lot less funny when he later becomes the parent bursting into her room and waking her up by screaming.

"J" takes things in a considerably hornier direction with Bridgerton. Around their birthdays—the one time of year she and her mom reliably talk—“J” unexpectedly finds herself having an actual, connecting conversation with her. Then her mom recommends Bridgerton, which raises some questions. This is the same woman who couldn’t tolerate bad language, didn’t want the kids watching MTV or The Simpsons, and doesn’t approve of tattoos…but apparently elaborate Regency-era sex is perfectly acceptable television.

Add in the time she unknowingly put a pot-leaf sculpture in her garden, decided it was funny once she learned what it was, and got permanent makeup tattooed on her face despite being anti-tattoo, and the theme becomes pretty clear: the rules are the rules—until Mom wants to break them.

Episode 36: Boundaries

This week, AJ and AJ are talking boundaries: setting them, holding them, and dealing with the people who suddenly become very confused about what a boundary is the second it applies to them.

"A" opens up about the trauma she experienced growing up and the long process of coming to terms with the reality of her childhood. After cutting family out of her life, she eventually tried to forgive her abuser—only to discover that when she started setting actual boundaries, they somehow became the victim. During this difficult season, "A" found comfort in the movie Boyhood. Watching another family navigate messy, complicated dynamics helped her process her own and made her appreciate her husband and the family they’ve built together even more, especially when protecting that family meant making some really hard choices.

"J" talks about moving to a new town and working in after-school programming with middle schoolers, where she became friends with the teachers whose classrooms she worked in. Soon they were hanging out regularly and became her “Friday Night Lights” crew—a chosen family at exactly the moment she needed one. Meanwhile, "J" was navigating the extremely chill and not-at-all emotionally loaded task of deciding which of her siblings would be invited to her wedding. She leaned on her fiancé and this new community to get her through it.

It’s an episode about family, chosen family, protecting your peace, and the deeply inconvenient reality that sometimes setting a healthy boundary makes other people extremely mad.

In Episode 35 of What’s Your Damage?, AJ and AJ talk about rejection—and what happens when the thing you thought would validate you becomes the thing that breaks your heart.

"A" starts us off with her early days as a young comedian in New York City, where the theater culture could be deeply toxic and so much of your identity depended on whether you were “chosen.” Being cast on a Lloyd team gave her a powerful sense of belonging and self-worth, but it also tied her confidence to an institution that could take that approval away at any moment.

She also talks about falling for a teammate who rejected her with the unforgettable line, “I don’t have feelings. I am a robot.” That rejection was followed by feeling unwanted by seemingly every man in the theater—and eventually being cut from the theater altogether. After building so much of her life and identity around that community, the final rejection felt complete.

The soundtrack to her last summer in New York was Robyn’s “Dancing on My Own.” She gave herself one final summer in the city, danced through the heartbreak, and then left.

"J" talks about graduating from nursing school in 2010, believing she had chosen a stable and dependable career, only to enter a job market that had not recovered from the recession. Experienced nurses were holding onto their positions, and new graduates could not get hired. She applied for jobs, followed up, and heard nothing—not just from hospitals, but from grocery stores and bookstores too.

To give her days structure, J created a routine: apply for jobs, make follow-up calls, watch an episode of Sex and the City, and then go to rehearsal at night. These women were getting rejected too—and so was she, even in the career that was supposed to offer stability.

At one point, J was finally offered a position, only to be called back and told they could not hire her because she was a new graduate. As the rejection and depression deepened, she watched all six seasons of Sex and the City twice in just two or three months.

In Episode 34 of What’s Your Damage?, AJ and AJ talk about loss—and the unexpected things that helped them survive it.

“A” begins with her junior year of high school. Until then, she had been a fairly average student who put very little effort into school. That changed when she met a teacher who inspired her to apply herself and recognized what she was capable of. For the first time, a teacher told her that she kicked ass and that he was proud of her.

Then, on Valentine’s Day, “A” arrived at school and learned that he had died suddenly on his 35th birthday. She was devastated. She went home to grieve, only to be yelled at by her father, leaving her without the support or space she needed to process the loss. Instead, she found comfort driving around alone and listening to Incubus’s Morning View, an album that gave her somewhere to place the grief she could not express at home.

“J” takes us back to 2007, when she had moved away with her husband and was juggling multiple jobs, school, wedding planning, and performing in shows. While studying, she escaped into Dancing with the Stars, allowing its glittery, dramatic world to provide a break from the pressure of her real life.

During this already overwhelming period, “J’s” sister died. Because her sister had also been her abuser, the loss brought an enormously complicated mix of emotions. There was grief for a young life ending, sadness for her family and her sister’s child, relief that she no longer had to fear or avoid her abuser. At the same time, her wedding was approaching, bringing moments of excitement alongside the grief.

Caught in an emotional roller coaster she did not know how to process, “J” coped by staying constantly busy and continuing to watch Dancing with the Stars.