The Parent Playbook with Princess Nyah

Nyah

There is no manual.Nobody handed you an instruction guide when you became a parent. No one warned you about the invisible weight you'd carry — the mental load that never switches off, the identity you'd quietly grieve, the guilt that sits with you at 2am even when you did everything right. The ambition you're still fighting for. The version of yourself you're trying not to lose.The Parent Playbook by Trybe is where modern parents finally get to tell the truth.Hosted by Princess Nyah — founder, mum, and the kind of person who makes you feel safe enough to say the real thing — every episode is a deep, unfiltered conversation with parents who are living it: founders, creatives, educators, tech leaders, musicians, and community builders. All of them parents. All of them carrying something the world rarely asks about.Each conversation is guided by what Nyah calls the Purple Print — the shared emotional patterns, invisible pressures, and survival systems that connect every parent, even when they feel completely alone.No advice you didn't ask for. No polished parenting expertise. No perfect answers.Just honest storytelling, lived experience, and the permission to feel fully human.Every episode ends with the same question:"What's one part of parenting you were never told would take up so much space in your head?"And every now and then — Nyah's daughter Kizzy reaches into a jar and asks her own. The Purple Print The real patterns parents are living inside — the emotional truths, invisible pressures, and shared experiences that rarely get spoken about honestly. This is the space where they do. Princess Nyah — founder of Trybe, mother, and host.She approaches every guest as a person first.

  1. Jul 29

    Gemma 2.0: Gemma Grandison on Lockdown Motherhood, Mental Health, Therapy & the Rebirth Nobody Talks About

    Send us Fan Mail This week on The Parent Playbook, Nyah sits down with presenter, mum and self-proclaimed Gemma 2.0 — Gemma Grandison. And this one feels less like a podcast and more like a therapy session between two women who have both been through it. Gemma is a mum of one — one and done, she is very clear about that — to a seven-year-old mini-me who is a Pisces and has her wrapped around her finger. But getting to this point, to the version of herself that is finally enjoying motherhood, was not a straight line. She opens up about the week she was booked to return to work after maternity leave — and the country went into lockdown. About being a solo mum in a pandemic with a baby who would not sleep and would not take a bottle, while her daughter's dad went back to work as a key worker and she stood in car parks two metres from the people she loved. About the extended maternity leave that stretched to two to three years. About the depression that crept in. The eviction. Moving back to her mum's. The downward spiral she did not see coming and the long road back out of it. But this is not a story about falling apart. It is a story about Gemma 2.0 — the rebirth. The therapy that changed everything and made her a better parent. The yoga and meditation practice that freed the stuck energy she had been carrying since she was a child who was told to stop crying and eventually did. The art therapy. The journaling. The gradual reclaiming of herself, her career and her joy. They also talk about the village we are all supposed to have and so rarely do. The way sleep deprivation is an actual form of torture. The guilt of admitting you are drowning when everyone expects you to be glowing. How therapy makes you a lighter, more present, more patient parent — and how you can access it affordably if you know where to look. Full of warmth, honesty and the kind of holistic gems that are actually free. This one is for the mum who has been fighting for her life and is ready to stop. If this conversation sat with you — that's the Purple Print doing its thing. Share this episode with a parent who needs to hear it. Not the one who has it all together. The one who's in it, just like us. Come find us on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube — we're @trybeuk — and if you want these conversations delivered straight to you, get on the newsletter. The link is in the show notes. No noise. Just the real stuff, when it matters. I'm Nyah. This is The Parent Playbook by Trybe. And I'll see you next Wednesday. trybeuk.com/newsletter  →

    Gemma 2.0: Gemma Grandison on Lockdown Motherhood, Mental Health, Therapy & the Rebirth Nobody Talks About
  2. Jul 22

    The Village, The Visibility & The Invisible Load: Tobi Oredein on Black Ballad, Entrepreneur Motherhood & Raising Children With Intention

    Send us Fan Mail This week on The Parent Playbook, Nyah sits down with Tobi Oredein — founder and CEO of Black Ballad, the ultimate modern members club for Black women, creating media, events and brand partnerships that reach and celebrate a community of over 2,000 women. Tobi is also a mum of two, with an 18-month age gap between her daughter and son — and as she puts it, the first year of her son's life was simply survival mode. They met over a fancy dinner at the Royal Albert Hall watching Erykah Badu perform — and the conversation on the purple couch is every bit as good as that night sounds. Tobi gets into what it really looks like to be an entrepreneur-mum in the belly of a growing business. The invisible load that doubles when you are running a company and raising children at the same time. The career mistakes she made during maternity leave — the ones she now calls learning curves. The nausea of a second pregnancy with an 18-month-old at home. The beautiful bond that formed between her husband and her daughter while she was too sick to change a nappy. And the upfront pain of a close age gap that she now describes as long-term gain. They also talk about what it means to raise Black children with intention — why there is no room in Tobi's world for her children to be average, and why giving them their voice, their manners and their understanding of the world they are growing into is not ambition, it is love. The Point Black Ballet School. Writing sessions with her son. Singing in the car. The morning hair routine she used to avoid and now treasures. A cooking class in Florence that became her favourite family memory. And the advice she would give to any woman entrepreneur who is putting off motherhood because of where she is in her business — do it. Build your village. Because the satisfaction your family gives you does not compare. Transparent, warm and completely unfiltered. This one helps you realise you are probably not parenting as badly as you think. If this conversation sat with you — that's the Purple Print doing its thing. Share this episode with a parent who needs to hear it. Not the one who has it all together. The one who's in it, just like us. Come find us on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube — we're @trybeuk — and if you want these conversations delivered straight to you, get on the newsletter. The link is in the show notes. No noise. Just the real stuff, when it matters. I'm Nyah. This is The Parent Playbook by Trybe. And I'll see you next Wednesday. trybeuk.com/newsletter  →

  3. Jul 15

    Out of the Mouth of Babes: Tacita Small on HR, Mum Guilt, Running a Business & the Day Her Son Told Her to Resign

    Send us Fan Mail This week on The Parent Playbook, Nyah sits down with someone who inspired her before she even knew what inspiration meant. Back in the early 2000s at Foot Locker Oxford Street, a young Nyah spotted a woman in a Louis Vuitton headscarf and the big sunglasses who carried herself in a way nobody around her had ever seen before — and decided right then that she wanted to be like that. That woman was Tacita Small. And now she is finally on the purple couch. Tacita is the founder of The Small HR Company, which provides HR services on set, on location and remotely to the film, television, music and theatre industries. She has two children who are six years apart, who have grown up with completely different versions of their mother, and who have — between them — delivered some of the most profound and hilarious parenting moments this podcast has ever captured. Including the day Tacita was working Easter Sunday on her laptop for a company that did not deserve her, on the verge of tears, when her youngest walked in and said: why don't you just resign? He did not know where he had got the word. But she typed up the letter, printed it, put it in her bag, and had it ready. And when they pushed her one more time, it was done. Out of the mouth of babes. This conversation goes everywhere. HR for creative businesses and why you need to think about it the moment you have your first employee. Flexible working and why your line manager matters more than any company policy. The bias that female founders with children face — and why being the person who leaves when your kid needs you is somehow still held against you when it should be seen as the most organised, capable, multi-threaded thing a person can do. The comparison trap with children and why Tacita learned to stop comparing hers to each other even though they could not be more different. Mum guilt and whether we should even keep calling it that. And the penny-drop moment Nyah describes: running a printing business that worked perfectly without her while she was on maternity leave, then coming home and realising that families are the only organisations that do not have systems. And that is exactly what she is trying to build. This one is a conversation between two women who go way back, talking about things that matter. If this conversation sat with you — that's the Purple Print doing its thing. Share this episode with a parent who needs to hear it. Not the one who has it all together. The one who's in it, just like us. Come find us on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube — we're @trybeuk — and if you want these conversations delivered straight to you, get on the newsletter. The link is in the show notes. No noise. Just the real stuff, when it matters. I'm Nyah. This is The Parent Playbook by Trybe. And I'll see you next Wednesday. trybeuk.com/newsletter  →

    Out of the Mouth of Babes: Tacita Small on HR, Mum Guilt, Running a Business & the Day Her Son Told Her to Resign
  4. Jul 8

    Dad Has an Invisible Load Too: Richard Cummins on Twins, Tech, the Dinner Table & Raising Three Kids Who Actually Talk to You

    Send us Fan Mail This week on The Parent Playbook, Nyah sits down with Richard Cummins  adtech professional, startup advisor, podcast host, North Londoner and father of three: twin daughters and a son. And yes, the twins came first. This week on The Parent Playbook, Nyah sits down with Richard Cummins — adtech professional, startup advisor, podcast host, North Londoner and father of three: twin daughters and a son. And yes, the twins came first. Richard brings a perspective to this podcast that does not come around often enough — the honest, reflective, self-aware male voice in the parenting conversation. Not the Instagram version. The real one. The one that admits to blocking his calendar between 3 and 3:30 to do the school run. The one that talks about his father coming home at 8pm and his own version of showing up completely differently. The one that says directly and without apology that dads have their own version of the invisible load — a silent pressure to lead, provide, be the man of the house — and that it does not get talked about nearly enough. They get into what three months of paternity leave at Google actually gave him — the full immersion, the four hands on deck, the realisation that nothing in corporate life comes close to what happens inside a home with newborn twins. The conversations they have around the dinner table now that his girls are eight, asking about his presentations, engaging with his work, becoming the kind of children who talk to their parents because their parents have always talked to them. The origami phase. The Duolingo streaks. Teaching his son to read sheet music from an iPad in two weeks when it took Richard years. They talk about the 11+ without the panic — what it actually tests, why reasoning and articulation matter more than cramming, and why neither of them is putting their child through the pressure of feeling like their whole future rides on one test at age ten. About money conversations at the dinner table the way Black families have always had them — and what it means that the next generation is growing up in rooms where the right words for those conversations already exist. Richard also gets into the invisible load as a man — why it is a different kind of weight, why men are less likely to talk about it, what it costs when you do not, and why both parents having their outlet is not a luxury but a requirement. This one goes deep, goes wide and finishes warm. If this conversation sat with you — that's the Purple Print doing its thing. Share this episode with a parent who needs to hear it. Not the one who has it all together. The one who's in it, just like us. Come find us on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube — we're @trybeuk — and if you want these conversations delivered straight to you, get on the newsletter. The link is in the show notes. No noise. Just the real stuff, when it matters. I'm Nyah. This is The Parent Playbook by Trybe. And I'll see you next Wednesday. trybeuk.com/newsletter  →

    Dad Has an Invisible Load Too: Richard Cummins on Twins, Tech, the Dinner Table & Raising Three Kids Who Actually Talk to You
  5. Jul 1

    The 4:30am Alarm: Reema Samuel-Lewis on D&I at Sky, Raising Money-Smart Kids & Making It Work Without Losing Your Mind

    Send us Fan Mail This week on The Parent Playbook, Nyah brings one of her oldest and most beloved friends onto the purple couch. They have known each other since they were 11 years old in their school uniforms — and it took this long to get Reema Samuel-Lewis in the chair. It was worth it. Reema is Head of Diversity and Inclusion Partnerships at Sky, where she oversees external partnerships, employee networks and community impact across the UK, Ireland, Italy and Germany. She is a wife, a daughter, a friend and a mum to two children aged 3 and 8 — and she somehow manages to get up at 4:30am twice a week to go to the gym, do the school run, build the shared calendar, earn the income, teach her children about Junior ISAs, and then come onto a podcast and make it all sound almost manageable. Almost. This conversation gets into the invisible load from the inside. Not just what it is, but what it actually looks like when you are the kind of person whose brain never stops — the lists, the columns, the shared calendar with everyone's names in it, the son who adds his birthday in six months in advance, the daughter who already understands what a bank card is at three years old. They talk about what it means to communicate your needs instead of burning out waiting for someone to notice, and why structure is not a control issue — it is how some of us survive. They also get into raising financially literate children in a household where money is talked about openly, investing in the things your kids already love, the Beyblade that costs £78 (and the investment conversation that followed), and what happens when you make your daughter buy her friend a marshmallow and watch the panic cross her face. Reema opens up about a pivotal career moment — a job she stayed in too long because someone kept telling her just do three more months — and what finally made her choose her own happiness. She talks about what it looks like to work in D&I, why she mentors young women, and what she would say to anyone trying to find their way into a meaningful career while raising children. Full of warmth, wisdom and the particular kind of honesty that only comes from two women who have known each other their whole lives. If this conversation sat with you — that's the Purple Print doing its thing. Share this episode with a parent who needs to hear it. Not the one who has it all together. The one who's in it, just like us. Come find us on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube — we're @trybeuk — and if you want these conversations delivered straight to you, get on the newsletter. The link is in the show notes. No noise. Just the real stuff, when it matters. I'm Nyah. This is The Parent Playbook by Trybe. And I'll see you next Wednesday. trybeuk.com/newsletter  →

    The 4:30am Alarm: Reema Samuel-Lewis on D&I at Sky, Raising Money-Smart Kids & Making It Work Without Losing Your Mind
  6. Jun 24

    You Don't Have to Pick One Lane: Glamz Tan on Raising Four, Reinventing Yourself & Staying in the Game

    Send us Fan Mail This week on The Parent Playbook, Nyah is joined by someone she has been desperate to get into the purple chair ever since she appeared on Glamz Tan's own podcast — and the conversation does not disappoint for a single second. Glamz Tan is a director, entrepreneur, podcaster, radio host, event coordinator and mum of four. Her children range from a 19-year-old son to a daughter in her early teens, a budding footballer and a jewellery-maker — four completely different humans she has raised while building multiple creative careers, surviving the chaos of three kids in pushchairs on a rainy bus and a vision board at the start of every single year that she has never once stopped filling out. This is a conversation about what it looks like to build when people told you to pick a lane — and to refuse. About being a singer-songwriter who became a podcaster who became a director who became a radio host who became whatever she needed to be next. About the down days that you hide in the bathroom with, the friend group that has held you up for decades, the lockdown moment that turned an idea into a show, and the fact that after everything — you've already won. Four times over. They talk about teaching children financial literacy from the age of six, raising kids who actually talk about investing and saving without being told to, what happens when your son goes to Spain at 19 and you try to follow him through security, and the very real panic of watching your child spend their own money for the first time. They also get into what it means to be a creative who does not fit one box, why the Jack of all trades mentality is an outdated trap, why resilience is not about having fewer bad days but about knowing you have been through them before and survived, and what Glamz told herself in the darkest moments to keep going. There is a lot of warmth in this one. A lot of laughter. And a lot of truth that lands differently when it comes from someone who has already been through the long game. If this conversation sat with you — that's the Purple Print doing its thing. Share this episode with a parent who needs to hear it. Not the one who has it all together. The one who's in it, just like us. Come find us on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube — we're @trybeuk — and if you want these conversations delivered straight to you, get on the newsletter. The link is in the show notes. No noise. Just the real stuff, when it matters. I'm Nyah. This is The Parent Playbook by Trybe. And I'll see you next Wednesday. trybeuk.com/newsletter  →

    You Don't Have to Pick One Lane: Glamz Tan on Raising Four, Reinventing Yourself & Staying in the Game
  7. Jun 17

    She DJed Until She Was Nine Months Pregnant: Nikki Beatnik on Mums at Rave, the Music Industry & Doing It Anyway

    Send us Fan Mail This week on The Parent Playbook, Nyah finally gets the guest she has been trying to book for five years. And she was worth every single minute of the wait. Nikki Beatnik is a DJ, producer, songwriter, music director, entrepreneur and mother — and she has been to 70 countries across six continents doing what she loves. She has toured the world pregnant, slept in coffin bunk beds eight months gone, DJed her last residency days before giving birth, survived an emergency C-section she nearly did not walk away from, and was back behind the decks six weeks later in C-section pants because the bills do not stop coming just because you nearly died. If that does not tell you everything you need to know about this woman, nothing will. But this conversation is not just about how tough Nikki Beatnik is. It is about the music industry's silence around mothers. The fact that women producers are still just 4% of the industry. The fact that touring DJs who become mums are essentially invisible to any kind of support structure. The pressure that the industry places on women to simply not have children — and why Nikki waited as long as she did before becoming a mum. They get into Mums at Rave — the all-women day party that Nikki has been running for seven years, that has now clocked over 100 million views on social media and 80,000 organic followers, where women come from all over the UK on a Saturday afternoon and rave harder than anyone has any right to rave at 2pm. Artists have been moved to tears performing there. Women have found the confidence to cut their hair, leave relationships, go for the job and just be themselves for a few hours without the weight of everything else. They also talk about the invisible load, the self-employment maternity pay trap that nobody warns you about, why you should absolutely set up a limited company, why Nikki gentle parented before it had a name, dressing intentionally as a daily act of self-preservation, and why the Thai spa in Penge is better than any five-star hotel in the world. There are still gems to come. They need a part two. But this one alone is more than enough to keep you going. If this conversation sat with you — that's the Purple Print doing its thing. Share this episode with a parent who needs to hear it. Not the one who has it all together. The one who's in it, just like us. Come find us on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube — we're @trybeuk — and if you want these conversations delivered straight to you, get on the newsletter. The link is in the show notes. No noise. Just the real stuff, when it matters. I'm Nyah. This is The Parent Playbook by Trybe. And I'll see you next Wednesday. trybeuk.com/newsletter  →

    She DJed Until She Was Nine Months Pregnant: Nikki Beatnik on Mums at Rave, the Music Industry & Doing It Anyway
  8. Jun 10

    The Load Never Leaves: Rachel Ado on the Invisible Weight of Motherhood & Building Anyway

    Send us Fan Mail This week on The Parent Playbook, Nyah is joined by the brilliant, bubbly and deeply inspiring Rachel Ado — host of the Milk and Mommies podcast, founder of Tired as Mum, entrepreneur, creative, and mum to the firecracker that is three-year-old Zena. And they are talking about the invisible load. The mental load. That relentless, never-ending, lives-rent-free-in-your-brain weight that nobody warned you about before you had children — and that nobody around you can fully take from you, no matter how much they try. Rachel knows it intimately. She is a planner, a creative, an entrepreneur, and a first-time mum — which means her brain is running four different programmes simultaneously, all day every day, and not one of them ever fully shuts down. They also get into something that does not get talked about enough — the guilt that comes with actually carving out time for yourself. The decision to take your first solo trip without your baby. The glistening eyes at the airport that you tried so hard to hold back. The moment you realise on the plane that the world has not ended and you are actually going to be okay. Rachel took that trip. She came back. And she has thoughts. They dig into what it really looks like to hand over the reins to your partner and actually let go — the prep, the lists, the coded language only a mother knows, the water bottle that becomes a whole crisis, and the moment you realise that maybe, just maybe, the way you hold onto everything might not be purely a mum thing. It might just be you. Rachel also opens up about Tired as Mum — the company she started to try and figure out why everything starts in mum's brain first — and why she is on a mission to build something that gives mothers a genuine day off. She talks fundraising, tech, apps, the 22-year-old boys getting millions for apps that remind you to drink water, and why there has to be something built for the woman who is holding everything together. Plus brilliant advice on how to start a podcast, why you should launch before you are ready, what Elton John has got to do with anything, and a Kizzy question that ends with dancing and a three-year-old who has somehow discovered Strictly Come Dancing. This episode is for the planner who cannot switch off. The creative who has an idea in the middle of making dinner. The mum who is building something while holding everything else up. You are not doing it wrong. You are just carrying a lot. If this conversation sat with you — that's the Purple Print doing its thing. Share this episode with a parent who needs to hear it. Not the one who has it all together. The one who's in it, just like us. Come find us on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube — we're @trybeuk — and if you want these conversations delivered straight to you, get on the newsletter. The link is in the show notes. No noise. Just the real stuff, when it matters. I'm Nyah. This is The Parent Playbook by Trybe. And I'll see you next Wednesday. trybeuk.com/newsletter  →

    The Load Never Leaves: Rachel Ado on the Invisible Weight of Motherhood & Building Anyway

About

There is no manual.Nobody handed you an instruction guide when you became a parent. No one warned you about the invisible weight you'd carry — the mental load that never switches off, the identity you'd quietly grieve, the guilt that sits with you at 2am even when you did everything right. The ambition you're still fighting for. The version of yourself you're trying not to lose.The Parent Playbook by Trybe is where modern parents finally get to tell the truth.Hosted by Princess Nyah — founder, mum, and the kind of person who makes you feel safe enough to say the real thing — every episode is a deep, unfiltered conversation with parents who are living it: founders, creatives, educators, tech leaders, musicians, and community builders. All of them parents. All of them carrying something the world rarely asks about.Each conversation is guided by what Nyah calls the Purple Print — the shared emotional patterns, invisible pressures, and survival systems that connect every parent, even when they feel completely alone.No advice you didn't ask for. No polished parenting expertise. No perfect answers.Just honest storytelling, lived experience, and the permission to feel fully human.Every episode ends with the same question:"What's one part of parenting you were never told would take up so much space in your head?"And every now and then — Nyah's daughter Kizzy reaches into a jar and asks her own. The Purple Print The real patterns parents are living inside — the emotional truths, invisible pressures, and shared experiences that rarely get spoken about honestly. This is the space where they do. Princess Nyah — founder of Trybe, mother, and host.She approaches every guest as a person first.