When was the last time someone asked what your favorite ice cream is and you actually knew the answer? In this episode, host Sarah Dooley sits down with Dr. Julie Fernandes, an occupational therapist, coach, and mom of three, to talk about what it really means to restore yourself after years of pouring into everyone else.

Julie brings her OT lens to family life in the most grounding way. We talk about why your home environment shapes your mental state more than you realize, how boundaries are actually an expression of love rather than control, and why setting clear expectations for your kids may be the most supportive thing you can do for your family right now.

We also get into tech boundaries at home, how Julie uses AI as a practical tool (not a magic fix), and why she believes parents have far more influence than they give themselves credit for.

If you have been feeling stretched thin, disconnected from yourself, or unsure where your authority ends and your anxiety begins, this conversation is for you.

Topics covered in this episode:

• The flamingo analogy that explains why moms lose their glow (and how to get it back)
• OT-informed strategies for managing clutter, routines, and mental load
• Why boundaries are love, and how to set them without the guilt
• Navigating screen time and AI with kids in a thoughtful, age-appropriate way
• How AI supports Julie's family life in small, practical ways
• Finding yourself again in the middle of the motherhood season

Guest: Dr. Julie Fernandes | @juliefernandesco on Instagram

Host: Sarah Dooley | @aiempoweredmom on Instagram

What if the relationship that helps you navigate parenting isn’t with another person, but with AI? In this Galentine’s Day special episode, Sarah Dooley sits down with Alexandra Samuel,AI and workplace speaker, Wall Street Journal and Harvard Business Review contributor, and host of the Me + Viv podcast, to explore what it really means to build a relationship with AI.

Alexandra shares her journey through what she calls “extra large parenting” as the mother of an autistic son, and how AI went from being a productivity tool to becoming Viv, her AI coach and companion. From creating personalized homeschool schedules in minutes to modeling lifelong learning for her kids, Alexandra reveals how AI can hold your hand while you hold theirs.

This conversation challenges the idea that AI is just another tool. Instead, discover how building an intentional relationship with AI can reduce your mental load, support your parenting journey, and deepen your human connections.

Topics discussed:

• What “extra large parenting” means and why work became Alexandra’s respite
• How AI transformed hours of homeschool planning into minutes
• The evolution of Viv from custom GPT to full AI companion
• Why parents need to co-learn AI alongside their kids
• Using AI to model lifelong adaptation and curiosity
• How AI can deepen connection rather than replace it

If you’re curious about AI but unsure where to start, or if you’re looking for ways to lighten your mental load without adding more to your plate, this episode offers a fresh perspective on what’s possible.

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"I ended up in the hospital."

Ekaterina Konovalova was spending $2,000 a month on tutors and therapists, driving her daughter to appointments five days a week, trying to be the perfect wife who cooks fresh meals and keeps a spotless house. She was managing her career, her family, and her household until she collapsed. A severe migraine. Dehydration. The hospital.

That's when she and her husband made a decision: pack up, leave Austin, move to Pittsburgh for a free dyslexia school that's one of the best in the nation. By third grade, her daughter was reading at sixth grade level.

This conversation explores what it means to push yourself past exhaustion before asking for help, the physical and emotional toll of advocating for your child, and how Ekaterina channeled her experience into Trust Me Mom, a podcast where she interviews experts to help other parents.

If you've ever felt like you're drowning trying to do it all, this episode offers both clarity and permission to make hard choices.

Connect with Ekaterina at Trust Me Mom podcast and on LinkedIn.

Reddhi Patel is a cultural architect in her bi-cultural family. She's not just planning celebrations or explaining traditions. She's translating between two worlds, bridging cultures, and carrying what she calls "the beauty and burden" of this invisible work.

In this conversation, Reddhi shares the ice hockey metaphor that explains her mental load: while her partner scores the goals, she's "actively assisting from every place in the ice hockey rink" to keep household operations running. She talks about COVID, when she was nine months pregnant, her team was laid off, and her mother-in-law passed away. That's when AI became her family operations coordinator.

This episode explores what it means to be the bridge between cultures, how Halloween and Diwali celebrations blend in her Vermont home, and how AI helped coordinate meals, logistics, and communication when her mental bandwidth ran out.

If you've ever felt the weight of being the bridge in your own family, this conversation offers clarity.

Connect with Reddhi at www.usealinaapp.com and take advantage of her special offer to access her free resources for families here.

Stepfamilies navigate a level of emotional, cognitive, and logistical complexity that most parenting advice was never designed to address. In this episode of the AI-Empowered Mom podcast, Sarah Dooley is joined by Cameron Normand, CEO of Stepfamily Solutions and host of The Stepmom Diaries podcast, for an honest, research-based conversation about what stepfamilies really need to thrive.

Cameron shares her personal journey as a stepmom, why stepmothers often carry a heavier mental and emotional load, and how unclear roles, high conflict dynamics, and unrealistic expectations can lead to burnout and isolation. Together, they unpack concepts like “stuck insider, stuck outsider,” why connection must come before correction, and why it can take five to seven years for a stepfamily to truly gel.

They also explore where AI can thoughtfully support stepfamilies, from ideating traditions and managing household logistics to improving communication tone, while naming clear boundaries where human connection and professional support still matter most.

This episode is a compassionate, practical guide for stepmoms, stepparents, partners, and anyone who wants to better understand the realities of blended family life.

Camp season has a way of pushing parents to the edge.Endless tabs, forgotten logins, waitlists that fill in minutes, and group chats that never sleep. In this episode of the AI-Empowered Mom podcast, host Sarah Dooley sits down with Molly Morse, co-founder of Recess, to talk about why planning camps and activities has become so chaotic and how it can finally get easier.

Molly shares how becoming a mom and a marketplace founder opened her eyes to how fragmented and outdated the camps and activities ecosystem really is. She explains why parents feel like everything is sold out while camps still have empty seats, and how Recess is creating a centralized marketplace to bring clarity to the chaos. The conversation also dives into how AI matchmaking helps surface the right options for each family, how group booking and scheduling tools could change everything, and why parents should trust their intuition when choosing programs for their kids.

This episode is a must-listen for parents staring down camp season and wondering how it got this hard and how it might finally get easier.

In this episode of the AI-Empowered Mom podcast, host Sarah Dooley is joined by sociologist and author Allison Daminger to unpack the invisible mental work that keeps families running and why it still falls so heavily on women.

Drawing from her book What’s on Her Mind? The Mental Workload of Family Life, Allison explains how traditional measures of household labor miss the constant anticipating, researching, organizing, and monitoring that happens inside parents’ heads. She shares insights from interviewing nearly 200 parents, including why time is the wrong metric for mental load, how the “superhuman and bumbler” dynamic shows up in many homes, and what her research revealed about different gender couples compared to queer couples.

The conversation also explores divorce and mental load, calendar partners, weaponized incompetence, and how AI could either reduce or unintentionally increase cognitive labor if it is not designed thoughtfully. Allison offers a grounded, compassionate reminder that if the mental load feels heavy, it is not a personal failure. It is a structural one.

A must listen for parents, caregivers, and anyone trying to understand why family life feels so mentally exhausting and what might actually help.

When AI can design almost anything, where does human creativity still matter?

In this episode of the AI‑Empowered Mom Podcast, host Sarah Dooley sits down with Deanna L. Leonard, fractional CMO, AI strategy leader, and one of LinkedIn’s Top 100 AI Creative Educators.

Deanna shares her journey from lifelong artist and corporate marketing executive to teaching AI confidence to midlife women and advising global brands on ethical, creative AI adoption. Together, they explore where humans outperform machines, how emotional intelligence shapes better AI outcomes, and why AI should act as a tool and not the storyteller.

This conversation covers AI fatigue, creative burnout, “AI slop,” ethical design, prompt mastery, and what 2026 may bring with AI agents and workflow transformation. Deanna also offers practical guidance for parents and caregivers navigating AI at home, including guardrails around creativity, screen use, and protecting children’s likenesses.

A grounded, human-first conversation about creativity, leadership, and designing a future where technology supports connection instead of replacing it.