Susanne Dillingham's daughter was 18 months old and still in diapers when Susanne walked away from her marriage. She had spent years building her private chef business, stepped away from it to stay home with her baby, and found herself in a marriage where money never got talked about and the support she needed wasn't there. So she left. She lived off her savings, rebuilt her business, and leaned on her sous chef to get through the days she was falling apart. I first met Susanne over handmade gnocchi at a Charlotte event, and I knew her story belonged on this show. We talk about the codependence she couldn't see while she was in it, what it took to trust her co-parent when bedtime looked different at his house, the story behind her memoir, Secret Ingredients of Life, and a Kingston University study of 10,000 people over 20 years that found women's happiness rises after divorce. If you've ever wondered whether anything is waiting for you on the other side of leaving, this one is for you.

Susanne Dillingham is a Florence-trained private chef, the founder of The Tiny Chef, and the author of the memoir Secret Ingredients of Life.

Connect with Susanne:

• Instagram
• Website
• Get her book

Resources mentioned:

• Secret Ingredients of Life by Susanne Dillingham
• Empower Her Village
• 17. Changing the Default Parent | Why We Swapped Seats for a Year
• 4. The Truth About “Broken Homes” | A Domestic Violence Survivor’s Story feat. Wadzanai Karanja

Research mentioned:

• "Back to Baseline in Britain: Adaptation in the British Household Panel Survey," Economica (2013), research led by Professor Yannis Georgellis, Kingston Business School

In this episode, we cover:

• Why Susanne walked away when her daughter was still in diapers, and why it felt like her only option
• The flowers on her husband's lunchbox, and how she lost pieces of herself without noticing
• How the savings that carried her through also disqualified her from government assistance
• Learning to let go when bedtime looks different at the other parent's house
• The one piece of advice she gives any woman sitting in this decision right now

Hosted by Chancé Hindir-Lane, Selfish Parenting is the honest, empowering podcast that challenges the myth of self-sacrifice in motherhood. Each episode explores identity, partnership, and the balance between nurturing your family and yourself.

Connect with Me:

• Instagram
• Shop My
• LTK
• YouTube - Chancè
• YouTube - Selfish Parenting
• TikTok

Okay, real talk: when your kid wakes up with a 102 fever on a Tuesday morning, whose phone rings first? Whose calendar gets cleared? Whose career takes the permanent hit? We celebrate equality on paper, and then life gets messy, and somehow, the woman's dreams get quietly shelved. For the past year, my husband and I decided to break that. He stepped back, took the primary parent seat, and I went all-in on my career. I was able to launch a non-profit, scale my brand across five countries, and proved that mothers don't have to shrink to make their families thrive. Today, we're breaking down the practical framework for taking turns in marriage, and the four rules that actually make it work.

Resources mentioned:

• Empower Her Village
• Harvard Business School Study on Career Precedence in Dual-Income Marriages

In this episode, we cover:

• How to set explicit seasons (not open-ended sacrifice) so one partner can sprint while the other anchors, plus how quarterly check-ins keep both people aligned
• Why "mom knows best" is usually just "mom has had more practice" and how to challenge the myth that fathers are less capable caregivers
• The four non-negotiable rules for taking turns: set expiration dates, dismantle the default parent reflex at schools/daycares, reframe male caregiving as strategic teamwork, and practice zero micromanagement

Hosted by Chancé Hindir-Lane, Selfish Parenting is the honest, empowering podcast that challenges the myth of self-sacrifice in motherhood. Each episode explores identity, partnership, and the balance between nurturing your family and yourself.

Connect with Me:

• Instagram
• Shop My
• LTK
• YouTube - Chancè
• YouTube - Selfish Parenting
• TikTok

Marriage can be beautiful, fulfilling, stretching, and deeply intimate, but it is not something I can honestly talk about for women without also talking about the risk, the labor, and the reality of what so many wives are carrying. In this conversation, I sit down with Yvette Henry to talk about what 15 years of marriage has taught her, why she still believes marriage can be worth it, and why I struggle to tell women that marriage is automatically worth it for them. We talk about choosing well, the limits of that advice, unpaid labor, faith-based expectations, the Proverbs 31 woman, emotional exhaustion, and what it means to stop performing wifehood and actually live inside a marriage that makes room for your whole self. Yvette also shares the heart behind her devotional Release, Rest, Remain, and why permission to rest is not something we need to wait for from our husbands, our children, the church, or the world… it is something we have to learn how to give ourselves.

Yvette Henry is a homeschooling mother of four, writer, and co-host of the podcast How Married Are You? alongside her husband, Glen. She has been married for 15 years, has built an incredible online community as Mrs. Melanin, and is the author of the devotional Release, Rest, Remain.

Connect with Yvette:

• Website
• IG
• Podcast

Resources mentioned:

• Release, Rest, Remain by Yvette Henry

Research mentioned:

• Women gain about seven more hours of housework per week after marriage — University of Michigan Institute for Social Research, Exactly How Much Housework Does a Husband Create?
• Men do about one hour less housework per week after marriage — University of Michigan Institute for Social Research, Exactly How Much Housework Does a Husband Create?
• Women initiate 69% of divorces, compared to 31% initiated by men — Michael J. Rosenfeld / American Sociological Association, Women More Likely Than Men to Initiate Divorces, But Not Non-Marital Breakups
• Who Wants the Breakup? Gender and Breakup in Heterosexual Couples — Michael J. Rosenfeld, Stanford University

In this episode, we cover:

• Whether marriage is actually worth it for women
• Why marriage requires work, not just love
• The danger of telling women to “choose well” like that alone can protect them
• What women gain and lose inside traditional marriage structures
• How faith can shape marriage, rest, and wifehood
• Why the Proverbs 31 woman has been misunderstood
• The difference between performing marriage and actually being in one
• Why rest has to come from within
• How Yvette and Glen think about division of labor, parenting, and partnership
• Why divorce can be an option without being treated like failure

Hosted by Chancé Hindir-Lane, Selfish Parenting is the honest, empowering podcast that challenges the myth of self-sacrifice in motherhood. Each episode explores identity, partnership, and the balance between nurturing your family and yourself.

Connect with Me:

• Instagram
• Shop My
• LTK
• YouTube - Chancè
• YouTube - Selfish Parenting
• TikTok