Exploring the liminal space between where we are and who we’re becoming—through stories of connection, healing, and becoming whole.
kimmywu.substack.com (https://kimmywu.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast)
Content note: This episode discusses sexual assault.
At 1:42 a.m. on a night in October 2024, a message went out in a Cornell fraternity group chat, allegedly inviting brothers upstairs to a 20-year-old woman the sender called "free p*ssy." Most of the outrage has focused on the second word. In this episode I read my essay about the first one.
I'm Kimmy Wu, a relational and sex therapist. I look at what "free" means when it's used about a woman's body: nothing owed, no consent, no consequence. I also look at how women become the currency men bond through, in frat houses, locker rooms, and boardrooms. I ask what "not all men" leaves out about the men who stayed silent. And I talk about the male friendships I've seen that don't need a woman in the middle, and what it would take for more men to send the other message: "Get up here. She needs help."
In this episode:
What "free" means, and whose freedom it describes
Why that message was never really about her
Precarious manhood, and the belonging men are afraid to lose
Not taking isn't the same as stopping it
Calling in versus calling out
Who paid
Get full access to Between Living & Dreaming at kimmywu.substack.com/subscribe (https://kimmywu.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4)
18 Sept 2026
Three Words, Four Exits
A man ended a letter to me with three words and four hedges in front of them. Another showed me everything and never said any of it. In this essay I read the case that we've been taught the wrong lesson—that the question was never whether love is spoken or shown, but whether it binds the person offering it to anything at all. On my mother, the language I lost, and the sentence I still haven't said.
Get full access to Between Living & Dreaming at kimmywu.substack.com/subscribe (https://kimmywu.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4)
12 Aug 2026
Between Presence & Permanence: Ending on Purpose
In the first session, I tell clients that my goal is not to keep them. Most people nod. Almost no one believes me.
This piece starts with a termination, a last session after three years, and works outward from there. To why so few of us have ever ended a relationship on purpose. To why we treat how long something lasted as proof that it mattered. To what it costs to be the person who stays behind and never finds out how the story went.
It also goes somewhere I didn't plan when I started writing. I was fourteen when I was sent overseas, and nobody asked whether I was ready. I've since built a profession around telling people, in the first hour, that they will be the one to decide when it's time.
Get full access to Between Living & Dreaming at kimmywu.substack.com/subscribe (https://kimmywu.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4)
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