Trauma Uncensored

Troy Frostad was a corporate executive living a normal life when a stage four colon cancer diagnosis stopped everything. What followed was 12 rounds of chemo, a 16-hour surgery, and a five-year fight he’s still in. This conversation is about what it actually costs to survive the unsurvivable — and what you do with the life you get back. Troy and Brooke talk about the shift that changes everything:...

Your nervous system was never working against you. Every survival response you developed -- the freeze, the shutdown, the hypervigilance -- served a purpose. It helped you make it. EMDR therapist Alice Stricklin joins Brooke to break down how trauma actually gets stored in the body, why it gets stuck, and what it really takes to process it. This is not a conversation about reliving the past. It's...

Secondary trauma, first responder marriages, and the invisible weight of the spouse's role — this is what it actually costs to love someone who runs toward danger for a living. Kate Carr has been married to Boston Police Officer Chris Carr for 16 years. In this episode, she shares why she calls the worst day of their marriage a blessing, how she built a life strong enough to hold both of them,...

HPV-related cancer diagnoses, all linked to his choices, all arriving while she was still processing the betrayal. In this episode, Eileen shares what it actually looks like to carry layered trauma in your body, why she refused to stay silent, and what she wants every woman to know about HPV before it’s too late. Content Notes This episode discusses marital infidelity, sexual betrayal, HPV and HPV...

Mandy Hamlin sent her 20-year-old son Cooper to a licensed, accredited rehab facility in California, charging $4,200 a day. She vetted it. She FaceTimed him the night before he died. The next afternoon, she found out he was gone through a voicemail. What followed wasn't just grief. It was the unraveling of a system that failed Cooper at every level, and a mother who refused to let it stay that...

Grief support and trauma healing take on a whole new dimension when you meet someone who has survived what most of us can barely imagine. Kelly Guay has lost her mother, her brother, a stillborn son, her husband, and her father — five profound losses spanning 17 years. And she is still standing. In this conversation, Kelly and Brooke explore what happens when grief keeps coming before you've f...

What happens when the person helping families through death is quietly carrying grief of her own at home? Alisha sat with families in their most devastating moments while simultaneously managing a long-distance caregiving role for her mother—diagnosed with stage four lung cancer and given months to live. She lived two and a half years. This is a conversation about grief layered on grief, the weigh...

Childhood trauma doesn't just shape your past; it shapes who you think you deserve to become.  For Marla Grant, it shaped 27 years of surviving domestic violence, PTSD, complex trauma, and the calculated plan it took to finally leave. This isn't a trauma healing story with a clean arc. It's a real-life story about staying because leaving felt more dangerous, dealing with grief you'...

We've all heard it: 'He's just being a boy' or 'He'll grow out of it.' But what if he doesn't? What if that 'phase' is actually deeply rooted shame? Today, therapist Jarrod Hoffman joins us to pull back the curtain on the silent epidemic facing teen boys. At 11 years old, Jarrod found pornography. Or more accurately, it found him. What started as curiosity quickly became a numbing mechanism after...

Rita Peters lost her husband Shawn to familial ALS in February 2022. Four months later, she lost his younger brother to the same disease. In this conversation, Rita walks Brooke through what it actually feels like to grieve someone every day for months before they are gone, why year two of widowhood broke her body in ways she never expected, and the moment her son told her she had “made a museum”...

Brooke sits down with Chris Carr, a 20 year Boston Police officer whose career spans patrol, special operations, SWAT, and now the academy. Chris shares how law enforcement ran in his family, then walks through the moment his “normal day” in 2021 turned into gunfire through a door and an image that still lives in his body. From there, the conversation moves into what happened after the scene clear...

Brooke sits down with Cassie Dobbs, a licensed professional counselor, registered art therapist, and fellow in thanatology with Riley Grief Services at Riley Children’s Health. Cassie shares how losing her dad at 18 shaped her path, and why art became the place she could go when words were not enough. Brooke reflects on Mallory’s grief journey, the role Riley Grief Services played for their family...

For Episode 50, Brooke takes us back to the beginning. This is a rerun of Episode 1, the first time she shared the story that started Trauma Uncensored, the day her family’s life split into “before” and “after.” Brooke and Andres explain why the show exists, healing out loud, telling the hard stories, and building a place where people feel less alone. Brooke recounts the violent crash that killed...

Brooke welcomes back John Kinsey and Carolyn Clennon for a raw, honest conversation about what first responder work really looks like after the adrenaline wears off. They talk about expectation versus reality, how a “sick person” call can become a cardiac arrest, and why you learn to make decisions fast even when you do not have perfect information. John shares how the job can tax relationships an...

Brooke is joined by Stephen Teal, a retired firefighter with 32 years in the fire service, to talk about what first responders carry and what finally forces it into the open. Stephen explains how humor and compartmentalization became the default coping tools, until one unexpected trigger hit his body like a warning light. From there, the conversation moves into what actually helps, peer support th...

Brooke is joined by Elizabeth “Liz” Boring, a licensed social worker and Fellow in Thanatology who supports families through Riley Grief Services at Riley Children’s Health. Brooke shares how Liz’s presence shaped her own grief journey, including small acts of remembrance that mattered more than people realize. Together they break down what thanatology is, why grief is not a mental health disorder...

Brooke sits down with Glenn Davis, a Florida firefighter-paramedic and longtime EMS educator, for a candid conversation about cumulative trauma and the moment his body finally said “enough.” Glenn describes his first PTSD collapse at home, the calls that quietly piled up behind the scenes, and how hard it was to admit he could teach about mental health while still missing it in himself. He also sh...

Brooke sits down with her longtime friend Carolyn Clennon, a paramedic in Indianapolis, for an honest look at what EMS work asks of a person over time. Carolyn shares what paramedic school demanded, how quickly burnout can build when you are expected to reset and go right back in service, and why the gap in support can feel louder than the sirens. She also talks about the double standard in how li...

Brooke finally does the deep-dive episode listeners have been asking for, an EMDR-focused conversation with Alice, an EMDR specialist recommended by Brooke’s own therapist. Brooke shares how EMDR first entered her life after Logan’s death, why she was too hijacked for it to land back then, and what changed when she returned to it years later alongside ketamine therapy. She also shares a personal u...

In Part Two with Bri, Brooke returns to the day Rio was born and what happened after the C-section, when something felt wrong immediately and Andres was pulled into another room while Bri lay in recovery, waiting. Bri describes holding fear with an open hand, trying not to spiral into every “what if,” and the shock of navigating decisions while groggy, stitched up, and separated from her baby. The...

This episode picks up right where last week left off, this time from Bri’s side of the story. Brooke sits with Bri, Andres’ wife and Rio’s mom, to talk about the quieter kind of trauma that can start long before a medical crisis: the waiting, the hoping, the expectations you did not realize you were holding. Bri shares what it felt like to navigate pregnancy fears, early bleeding, the pressure of...

Brooke sits down with producer Andres for an episode that feels like both a reunion and a turning point. Andres shares the first major trauma of his life, open-heart surgery at six years old, the moment he was told he was pronounced dead on the table, and what he remembers about the time that followed. From there, the conversation moves into how early medical trauma can echo for decades, shaping f...

Brooke welcomes therapist and friend Tara for a candid conversation about loving her brother Cody, losing him to an accidental fentanyl overdose at 37, and learning how community holds what one person cannot. Tara shares growing up with two older brothers, the long arc of Cody’s addiction, and why highly sensitive people can be especially vulnerable. She explains addiction in plain language, compa...

Brooke welcomes Daniel for a candid conversation about growing up in chaos, choosing a different path in seventh grade, and what it took to build a steady life as an adult. Daniel describes a childhood shaped by addiction, violence around the home, and the day he drew a hard line and moved in with his grandmother. He shares the grief and complexity of his mother’s overdose, how therapy and ministr...

Brooke sits down with Shayna to trace a decade of grief after her father’s death was quickly deemed a murder-suicide. Shayna walks through the calls, the drive-way “funeral march,” and the details that never added up, then names what living with unanswered questions does to a nervous system. Brooke grounds the conversation in real tools that help, talking about EMDR and ketamine-assisted therapy a...