Moms Crave Deeper Conversations—New Card Deck Aims to Break the Ice

You’re at the playground, making small talk with another mom while your kids dig in the sandbox. The conversation follows a predictable script: sleep schedules, daycare waitlists, whether your toddler will eat anything green. It’s pleasant enough, but you’ll forget about it by the time you pile your kids into the car for nap time.

What you really wanted to ask is: What’s something about birth and postpartum that surprised you? What do you wish your partner understood? How did becoming a mother change your marriage?

Those are the conversations that actually matter, because they deepen relationships and allow mothers to pass their wisdom to one another. But they feel impossible to start without seeming intense or intrusive.

Spread the Jelly, an 18-month-old media platform, wants to help. It has just launched a deck of cards called The Sticky Stuff, meant to prompt mothers to have deeper conversations faster.

“Everything we’ve been doing is about breaking people open, allowing people to be their messiest or their happiest selves at the same time.”

Amrit Tietz, who founded the company with Lauren Levinger in late 2024, explains the mission behind the cards. The Sticky Stuff, available on the Spread the Jelly website for $45, joins a growing number of conversation cards that have entered the market, including therapist Esther Perel’s Where Should We Begin? cards (launched in 2021), Tales (which facilitates conversations with kids), and even fast food chains like Chick-fil-A, which gives out cards meant to prompt conversations around meals.

“The popularity of the cards highlights how we desperately want to talk about deep issues.”

Nicholas Epley, a professor at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, has been studying conversation for two decades. He notes the trend reflects a broader desire for authentic, meaningful dialogue.

From Isolation to Community: The Birth of Spread the Jelly

The idea for Spread the Jelly’s conversation cards didn’t start with market research or a business plan. It started with two women in Los Angeles who desperately needed someone to talk to.

Lauren Levinger had recently had her son when Amrit Tietz, pregnant and without mom friends in her life, reached out via social media. “From social media, you look like you’re doing motherhood pretty well,” Tietz wrote to her. “Can we connect?”

When they finally sat down together months later, they were surprised by how good it felt to have an honest conversation. They quickly began to discuss the things that nobody talks about, from how lonely it can be to spend your days with a non-verbal human, to postpartum sexuality.

“We realized how starved we were for community.”

This prompted them to launch Spread The Jelly, an online magazine for radical honesty about modern motherhood. The conversation cards came later, as a natural extension of that mission.

How The Sticky Stuff Works

Tietz and Levinger began to build out a deck of questions, testing them with partners, families, and friends. The final deck encompasses four categories: foundation, identity, belonging, and intimacy. Sample prompts include:

• “Describe your childhood in
• “What’s a myth about motherhood you believed before you had kids?”
• “How has your relationship with your partner evolved since becoming parents?”
• “What’s something you miss about your life before kids?”

The goal is to make it easier for mothers to broach topics they might otherwise avoid, fostering deeper connections and shared understanding.