Sarah Ison and Chelsea Heaney have and they've made a comedy show about it.

The duo's upcoming performance at Smith's Alternative Growing Pains is a half sketch, half stand up comedy show that takes you back in time to the performers' own childhoods. It's a coming of age tale that begins in different parts of the world, through to time in their adopted home of Canberra and even looking into the future of what they may be like.

"It strays from your typical 'adulting' theme where you just talk about, it's so hard being in my 20s in the 21st century," Ison says.

"There's a bit of that at certain times, but it's a bit more this is where I grew up and this is how I grew up.

"The way we've done that as well is not just focus on our early 20s and just stay there but actually look at us growing up as kids and really diving into those stories, some of which we have touched on in our comedy and some of which we really focused on and wrote a lot of new stuff for."

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Both Ison and Heaney are both performers with backgrounds in stand up and theatre work, so it makes sense that when they did team up for a show, both sides of their on-stage lives would come out. But what is interesting is just how vulnerable they are being on stage. Their other work isn't nearly as personal as what Growing Pains is expected to be.

"Usually you're on the street and you see something funny or think of something funny about your profession or this city and you write a joke off that. It's quite rare to do that exercise of looking back, which has been really nice," Ison says.

But in doing that exercise, it was also a chance for the performers to learn about sides of themselves that they didn't know were there - even if it was only during the time they were children - or become reacquainted with stories that they had forgotten about.

Ison talks about being born in Switzerland, before moving to Perth with her family. She touches on how she wasn't born a boy and some of her uncles were sad about that. She's taken a look at letters written to Santa and noted just how demanding and obnoxious she sounded.

For Heaney, it was a process of finding out who she used to be and how things have changed since.

"I had to go to my parents and ask about some things that I did when I was a kid. And it's interesting because a lot of my stuff now is about how you fake it till you make it with confidence - I even have a podcast called Loud and Seemingly Confident," she says.

"But when I was talking to my parents, they were talking about how I just had no problem with confrontation, I just had all the confidence in the world as a kid. So I've had fun looking at where did that come from as a kid? And why don't I still have it now? And how can I get it back?"