Episodes

Kelley Skoloda was a very healthy woman until she was diagnosed with cancer. Along with the brutal treatment came a new way of looking at her life. As a successful MBA with a thriving career, adjusting to a period of health challenge felt out of step. However, over time she applied her considerable skills to navigating her cancer and ultimately becoming a support for others going through cancer and treatment. Join us as we talk about what happened, what helped her, and what didn't.

When Gina Harris' parents died, she tried to stay connected to them through memory and music. As a jazz singer, over time she began to sing her sorrow, and her healing. The music that came out of this deep place in her led her to offer it to others, in performances and a podcast series dedicated to them and to her own grief process. Join us as we talk about what compelled her to create the series and how it helped her to move forward after loss.

Karen V. Johnson, a successful judge promised a lifetime appointment, was sure she would continue living the same way indefinitely. But when her son died of a heroin overdose she soon realized everything needed to change. Setting off on a quest to sooth her overwhelming grief, she found her way over time to a life she had never imagined, full of rich spiritual experiences, new practices and a freedom she had never allowed herself. Join us as we talk about how she learned to follow her own inner ...

Little House on the Prairie personified a simple, pioneering and wholesome lifestyle, bringing love and family into our living rooms. It is still loved around the world long after the series ended. But what of the real people who created and starred in the show? Karen Grassle had struggled with building her acting career but was finding success in New York. She never imagined herself on t.v. until she was offered the role of Ma. How did her own struggles impact her in those years and how did she...

When Rachel Michelberg's husband crashed into a vineyard, suffering a severe brain injury, she'd been thinking about leaving the marriage and even entertaining the idea of an affair. How would she find it within her to take care of him and their children? Shouldn't a wife naturally rise to the occasion? But she didn't feel able to do so. She faced her own judgement and disdain from some of the people around her (especially his family). In the process of coming to terms with what she could and co...

An unconventional childhood led Jessica Vitalis, circuitously, to a career as a young adult fiction writer. In exploring themes of death and grief, domestic violence, and socio-economic disparities, she guides her young readers to grapple with the challenges that face them. Many of her stories create magic and fantastical environments that keep young readers engaged and helps to open them to the deep subjects Jessica shares. How did she come to this way of writing and how has it helped her to in...

When both of Meghan Riordan Jarvis' parents died within a short period of time she experienced what could only be called Post Traumatic Stress. As she moved through her experience she called on all her humor, wit and knowledge to go forward even when she didn't know how. What emerged was a new aspect of the work she was doing, dedicated to supporting other grievers. With her blog, podcast and soon to be released book, Chasing Dark Skies, sharing her own experience has brought comfort to a commun...

Do you remember where you were when two jets plowed into the World Trade Center buildings? If you were at ground zero, you have a particularly harrowing story to tell. But that day affected most people no matter where we were. For the people who then navigated boats on the Hudson, their peaceful everyday world became a rescue operation. In interviews afterwards they shared the compelling drive that led them to improvise, regroup and help 10s of thousands of people get off the island of Manhattan...

What makes it possible for some of us to create the lives we dream of while others are held back by our life stories? Sherry Fernandez was always geared to growth. She never saw rough times in her childhood as a reason to fail. Even when she encountered bumps in the road she always looked for a way forward. Over many decades she noticed the skills that kept her on track. She studied with masters who added to her natural abilities. And over time she became a mentor for others, encouraging them to...

Although a diagnosis of autism is not, by itself, a loss, many losses come as a result. Most autistic kids are bullied, kept out of activities they would enjoy and sometimes rejected by the people closest to them. Temple Grandin's mother decided early on to raise Temple with love but also to push her to have the best possible life. As a result, Temple has lived a life of meaning and purpose, helping to completely change the beef industry's practices and becoming a college professor. Her new book...

The impact of Peg Conway's mother's death, when she was just 7, reverberated through her life, impacting her sense of safety, her reactivity and her sense of alienation. Maybe even more than the loss, the failure of her family to keep her mother alive for her created a gaping hole in her. It also resulted in the loss of ongoing connection with her mother's family when her father remarried. It wasn't until Peg gave herself permission to deeply explore her own grief and who her mother had been tha...

As an OB-GYN, Dr. Kate White knew almost everything about the physical aspects of miscarriage and pregnancy loss. But it wasn't until she experienced it herself that she truly understood the emotional impacts of a pregnancy that does not result in bringing a baby home. She set out to combine her vast knowledge with her new realization and in the process created a complete guide for families who grieve the loss of a pregnancy. What information helps families understand what has happened? And how ...

After a loss we're so aware of the missed opportunities, the things we'll never be able to do with the person we love. For Katie Russell Newland, her mother's death made their dream of touring every baseball stadium, all in one year, an impossibility. Or did it? Could Katie fulfill the dream as a way to honor her mom and their relationship? After her own cancer diagnosis and treatment, Katie took the time and went on the trip her mother had envisioned when she was just a little girl. In the proc...

When Leslie Streeter's husband, the love of her life, died suddenly after asking for kisses, she struggled to fulfill the life they had built together. Would she be able to complete the adoption of their son, not even 3 years old? How would she raise him alone? And how would she navigate this crushing grief? She would rely on community, family and humor to clear a path, taking one step at a time and guided by what her husband, Scott, had envisioned for them. Slowly, and surely, her way forward w...

What pushes a world class economist and sociologist to become an expert in Post Traumatic Growth? What inspires him to believe that we can heal from trauma and find our way to lives beyond what we can imagine? Dr. Randall Bell, born with a congenital heart condition, was diagnosed with PTSD early in life. His own path to Mt. Kilimanjaro convinced him that as humans, we are able to go forward from traumatic experience. This led him to his passion for supporting others towards their best lives. Hi...

There is no easy path from a devastating loss to who will become. Right after the loss and for an unpredictable amount of time after it can feel like going forward is impossible. For Meg Nocero, the impact of her mother's death and her career disappointments caused her to wonder whether there was any way forward. But those experiences pushed her to explore any healing mode that might help, including practices she couldn't have imagined previously. Slowly, over time, she found her way and found a...

As a practicing medium who believed in heaven, Shauna Domalain could never have predicted how hard grief would hit after her son Jack's death. Years of pain followed and she was unable to use the tools that had served her so well before that terrible loss. But over time she began to receive signs that Jack could be found, that he was communicating with her. All she had to do was believe the messages she was receiving. As she came to rely more and more deeply on the close relationship between the...

How can a mother and daughter reconcile when they cannot agree on the most basic of truths? As the author of Courage to Heal, Laura Davis became an advocate for women (and some men) who had experienced incest. But her mother Temme could not accept that Laura's grandfather had been her molester. Through years of struggle, they formed a relationship despite the hurt caused by Temme's inability to come to terms with the truth. Laura continued to heal from her trauma, creating a life of love and con...

Diana Kupershmit had the plans for her life clearly mapped out; finish college, graduate school, marry your high school sweetheart, start a family. She was not prepared for the jolt of the unexpected that arrived with the birth of her first child, Emma, who came with severe disabilities. Feeling unable and unprepared to raise a child with such profound needs, she and her husband looked for a family who could give her what she needed and love her too. But fate led Emma back to them, changing Dian...

Trauma in our early lives, or even later into adulthood, rewires us to such a degree that life can become deeply frightening. Finding a way to foster healing involves listening to ourselves, looking for support and healing modalities that resonate for us, and finding a way to make living safe and growth-ful again. Jeanine Leblanc lost her mother young, but that was not the sum of her trauma, Feeling unsupported and ill used in that loss made it hard to recover. It took moving into her adulthood ...

Doctors have more experience than most with navigating the end of life. Yet when illness and death come close to home, their well crafted distance and objectivity no longer covers all the bases. As Martha Calihan faced the end of her husband's life, she had to learn to be both doctor and wife, retaining her powers of critical thinking in helping him making medical decisions and her powers of empathy and connection for him as wife. What changed in the process was her relationship to both death an...

Abbe Greenberg and Maggie Sarachek have literally written the book on supporting yourself through anxiety and panic attacks. And of course, they tried it ALL to deal with their own anxiety, because experience is the best teacher! Join us to talk about how they each experienced anxiety, what they did to address it, and what it is like to support others through the same struggle. So much is lost as a result of anxiety; our freedoms, our sense of well-being, relationships and time! But confronting ...

When Vaneetha Rendell Risner found a deeper faith coming to terms with her childhood disabling polio, she thought that was the end of her challenges. Now, since she was walking with her hand in her God's, life would go well. But a series of deep losses, including the death of her son when he was less than 2 months old, once again shook her to her core. Join us to talk about her life-changing experience of walking through that fire of loss. In the end, the inner resources she discovered were deep...

The worst things in Mary Potter Kenyon's life led her inexorably back to her first love; writing. Her first book dealt with her husband's cancer diagnosis and the next two with her grief after the deaths of her mother, husband and grandson. Now immersed in this new life evolving out of her deepest sorrow, her next two books encourage others to use creativity to respond to their lives, thereby bringing about the same beauty and wonder she has found. Mary believes that each person's creative drive...