Today on The Daily Whatever Show, we were joined by essayist Anna Wick, who gamely logged in at 7am Sacramento time with a giant cup of coffee and exactly the kind of dry, early-morning humor we needed. Before we even got into the heavier parts of her story, we spent a few minutes commiserating about west coast mornings, terrible sleep schedules, and the shared delusion that any of us are “camera-ready” at dawn.
Once Anna settled in, we talked through the bio on her Substack — the one that reads like a quick sketch of someone who has lived several lives: mom of two, failed good girl, former trad wife, photo hustler, bathroom singer. What starts as a playful list lands differently in conversation, because each line traces back to the world she came out of.
The heart of the episode centered on that world: purity culture, the strict evangelical environment she grew up in, and the long project of disentangling herself from identities that were chosen for her before she was old enough to understand them. Anna talked about what it meant to be raised inside a system that defined her value through obedience, silence, and “good girl” performance — and how much work it took to push back against those narratives, build a life that belonged to her, and eventually reclaim both her voice and her autonomy.
What makes Anna’s story compelling isn’t the shock factor; it’s the clarity. She talks about leaving purity culture without romanticizing the escape or minimizing the impact. She discusses parenting, dating, and creating from a place shaped by that history — not defined by it, but informed by the excavation it required.
We also spent time on her creative work, the pull between writing and photography, and that familiar feeling of opening a laptop to do one thing and somehow ending up absorbed in another. There’s a steadiness in the way she talks about her craft, a sense of someone building a life slowly and deliberately after being told for years that the architecture wasn’t hers to design.
By the end, the three of us were laughing again — about future episode topics (most def more sex next time) and about our strange corner of the internet where these mornings now unfold.
It was a grounded, honest conversation with someone who has lived a complicated story and tells it without theatrics — just clarity, humor, and a lot of self-reflection.
Thank you Jason Odell, Stephanie G Wilson, PhD, Polly Walker Blakemore, Char Sundust, Dr. Mary M. Marshall, and many others for tuning in. We love you, meant it!
